My Man Pendleton Read Free Page A

voice a bit. "In light of the … situation…" he said meaningfully. At least, Pendleton assumed it was meaningful to some body. "Don't you think it might be more … appropriate … for someone else to handle this?"
    His father shook his head slowly. "I think the situation being what it is, you're without question the perfect candidate for the job."
    "But—"
    "But nothing," his father interrupted him. "You handle the temperance people. Now let's move on."
    McClellan, Jr. obviously wanted to say more, but must have decided to do it elsewhere, because he only ground his teeth together and turned back toward the others without a further word.
    So McClellan, Sr. continued. "We also need to address the asinine new law the boys in Frankfort have enacted against the tobacco companies," he said, "because I think we can safely assume that those joyless little bastards will be coming after the distillers next. We need to start planning our counterattack now. I've asked Novak and Martin to prepare a presentation, and I understand they're ready to proceed. Novak? Martin?"
    Two men rose from the middle of the massive table, one bearing a big cardboard tube, the other with a collapsible easel tucked under one arm.
    Oh, yeah, Pendleton recalled from some dusty, cobwebbed corner of his mind. The corporate presentation. He'd almost forgotten what those were like. Looked like his first day on the job was going to be a nice, long, boring one indeed. But then, was that really surprising?
    The two men launched into an inflated dialogue about cost overrun and capital-intensive, punctuated with excessive use of the words parlay and utilize, and with frequent emphasis on impact as a verb. Pendleton took that as his cue to ignore the pie charts and bell curves and view graphs and study his coworkers instead, quizzing himself in an effort to remember their names. He'd been introduced to each of them during training, and although his memory was exceptional, it never hurt to practice.
    Rutledge, he recalled, eyeing the man directly opposite him, was VP in charge of public relations. To Rutledge's right was Hayes, VP in charge of research and development. Carmichael, the solitary woman at the table, headed up advertising.
    One by one, Pendleton took in his colleagues, trying to note distinguishing characteristics of each of them that would help him keep names linked to faces. And that was when it hit him, what had initially bothered him when he first sat down at the table, what it was that seemed so wrong. Except for Carmichael , whose obvious lack of a Y chromosome, not to mention truly spectacular legs, would make her easy to remember, none of Hensley's VPs had any distinguishing characteristics. Except for McClellan, Jr., who was blond, all the executives looked exactly alike.
    Like Pendleton, they were all dark-haired and appeared to have brown eyes. Seated as they were, the male contingent seemed to have heights, weights, and builds that were virtually identical. Even Chang, Bahadoori, Redhawk ,
Washington
and Ramirez, whose clear ethnic backgrounds at least offered them some measure of individuality, all bore a marked resemblance in coloring and body type to every man present. Carmichael , too, was a brown-eyed brunette, tall and solidly built.
    Good God, Pendleton thought, he was a Stepford Executive.
    Certainly dark coloring was dominant over light, he tried to reassure himself, but still … Eleven people of nearly identical appearance kind of skewed the odds a bit. Surely there should be one or two blonds at least in the group. A Knutson or Wilhelm or Johannes or something. Of course, Pendleton was no expert on genetics—hey, who was?—but even he doubted that the odds of this kind of thing occurring were very—
    "Pendleton!"
    He flinched at the sound of his name thundering from McClellan, Sr.'s end of the table. "Sir?" he responded.
    "I asked what you thought about Novak's suggestion."
    Pendleton bit the inside of his jaw and pretended