Chapter 1

Sam Charles walked into the office and headed down the hallway. Walking into Katie’s office, he grabbed his overnight faxes from his bin and said, “Morning!”

Katie looked up from her desk and smiled. “Good morning to you.” She stood and leaned forward over her desk, passing him a note. “Derrick wants you in his office as soon as you came in.”

Sam took the note and scanned it. “Wonder what I’ve done now?”

Katie laughed and said, “I’m sure it wasn’t good.”

Sam left the office and continued to his own. Dropping his briefcase on his desk, he shrugged off his jacket and took off his hat, then went back out. Going upstairs, he went down the hall to the executive offices. Derrick Busby’s door was open, and he saw that Derrick’s brothers, Jack and Billy, were also present. The three were talking about Derrick’s newborn son. Sam entered and flopped down on the couch next to Billy. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Little Derrick has got some sort of bug,” commented Billy. “He’s not feeling too hot.”

“That’s too bad.” Little Derrick was Sam’s newest nephew, Sam being brother-in-law to the three other men. He had married their oldest sister years ago, long before he had joined the firm. “He getting enough to eat?” he asked innocently.

The room exploded in laughter. Lonnie, Derrick’s wife, was a small girl, small everywhere except in her bust size, which was astonishingly huge. When not pregnant she was easily a DD cup; when pregnant and nursing, she grew at least a couple of cup sizes larger. Sam had never seen a woman with bigger tits, even in the porn movies he had seen, and had never been able to understand how she never toppled forward onto her face. What she did to a swimsuit or a tight sweater had to be seen to be believed.

While Billy and Jack struggled for their breaths, Derrick grinned. “He’s very well fed, thank you very much.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Christ, you’ll never be able to wean the little guy,” said Jack. “He’ll be the fattest baby in the world!”

It took a couple of minutes more for the room to settle down. Sam contemplated the other two wives. Noreen, Jack’s wife looked like a centerfold from the neck down, and a horse from the neck up; he could never decide what he would do if he woke up next to her one morning with her on his arm, chew his arm off or close his eyes and screw her. Billy’s wife, Kathy, was Noreen’s cousin and was the real beauty of the family. She had modeled in her teens, and childbirth had simply added some pounds in all the right places. What she ever saw in Billy was a mystery to Sam. The man was very rough and crude, while she was quite refined, but they got along famously. Once, at a party, Kathy was wearing a long denim skirt with snaps up the front and had commented that the room was warm. Billy, reclining at her feet, had reached up and ripped the snaps open almost to her waist. Everybody had laughed, but Sam had been surprised by the explicit way Billy displayed his wife, and by the fact that she didn’t seem to mind or cover herself up afterwards.

“Any reason you can’t go down to the Oneonta office this morning?” asked Jack.

Sam eyed the others curiously. “Not particularly. Why?”

Derrick answered the question. “We want you to audit them.”

“Paperwork or payroll? Both?” Derrick nodded, and Sam continued, “I’m a few weeks early on the paperwork audit, but at least a month behind on payroll. I doubt if Clark will even notice. What’s going on?”

Jack said, “We’re letting Clark go. I’ll meet you down there and tell him it’s not going to work out. I want you to see how bad the mess is.”

Billy interjected, “You’ve wanted him gone all along anyway.”

Sam made a wry smile and nodded. Since first meeting the new manager, he had thought him to be a walking nightmare. A few months into Clark’s reign, he had gone to Derrick and told him what he had witnessed so far, but his comments had been neither requested nor desired. Sam shut up and let the numbers do the talking for him. The last quarterly audit had been an unmitigated disaster, the lowest ranking in company history. Now it looked like the others had woken up.

“So, who’s taking over down there?” Sam already knew the answer to this one as well.

Derrick pointed at him and said, “You are. How much time can you put in down there? Jack will backstop you, and Dickie, too, if needed.”

Sam rubbed his face. He had been expecting something along these lines. He had started with the company in sales, working his way up to Sales Manager in the flagship Saratoga office before being reassigned. The recession hadn’t been his fault, but Big George, his father-in-law hadn’t cared. It had taken his sons buying him out to resurrect his reputation. “I can’t see where I can put in more than three or four days a week. How long is this going to last?”

Jack said, “Six months, maybe more, maybe less. Through the winter, at least. I’ll fill in the other couple of days. We’ll have to see about hiring another Sales Manager. In the meantime, you need to clean house and start over again from scratch. The only people left are Margie and a new secretary.”

Sam thought it over. Margie Jackson was one of the top salespeople for Busby Housing. It would be a start, at least. He glanced at his watch and stood up. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be on the road. I’ll be down there no later than 11:00. Give me an hour to finish the audit before you show up.” Jack nodded, and the meeting broke up. Sam stopped as he left the room and turned back. “You know, I was talking to Lee on Sunday, and I mentioned just this very possibility.”