Free Establishment by Howard Fast Page A

control the wealth and power of the city is even smaller, Dan Lavette and his son were bound to come face to face periodically. On such occasions, they both respected the widening gulf that separated them, and each made no effort to resume contact with the other. Observing this, Jean would press the subject with Dan.
    â€œHe is young and insufferable, if you will, but he is still your son.”
    Dan would simply reply, “That’s quite true,” and let it rest there.
    In time, Jean no longer raised the possibility of a reconciliation. She herself saw her son regularly if not frequently. About once a month, he would call and ask her to lunch with him.
    When Jean remarried after her divorce from Dan, she chose John Whittier for her husband. He had inherited the largest shipping line on the West Coast, and during the war years it had expanded enormously. After his marriage to Jean in 1931, he had developed a growing fondness for Tom, possibly less as a person than as the potential heir to the Seldon Bank. When Tom came into his share of the controlling stock of the bank, Barbara sold him a portion of her share, quite willing to let him have it; then his interests merged with Whittier’s to form an entity they called Great Cal, one of the largest holding companies on the Coast.
    Through the years, Whittier’s position as the dominant force in the corporation weakened. He saw Tom originally as a rather bland, reasonably bright, well-mannered young man, but one without too much ambition and drive. In this, he misjudged him.
    During the next dozen years, Tom established himself as the major force in the combine. Now, at sixty, Whittier was a petulant, overweight hypochondriac who had already suffered one real heart attack and at least a dozen imaginary ones. Nominally the president and the chairman of the board of directors of Great Cal, he was little more than a figurehead. Problems were brought to Tom and decisions were made by Tom. In western financial circles, he was regarded as one of the most powerful and promising of all the young men who had come into industrial control at the end of the war.
    Jean had not heard from him for well over a month when he called and asked her to lunch with him at the Fairmont. When Tom did not lunch at his club, he ate at the Fairmont. Jean once asked him why, in a city that boasts more good restaurants than any other city of its size in America, he always ate at the same place. He had replied, “Mother, I do not eat in strange restaurants.”
    Jean knew enough about her son to make anyone else, possessed of her knowledge, dislike him intensely. For her part, she would not judge him and she refused to dislike him. He was agreeable and pleasant to her, and he was also quite handsome. She thought of this as he came across the dining room to join her, more slender than Dan, but with Dan’s height and breadth of shoulder and with her own blue eyes, light hair, and fair skin. Jean felt that physically, both children had the best of both of their parents.
    He greeted her warmly. “Mother, you look absolutely splendid. Still the most beautiful woman in any room you enter.”
    â€œWhat nonsense! I am fifty-eight years old, and I make no attempt to hide or deny it.”
    â€œNo need to.”
    â€œWhat on earth makes you this amiable?”
    â€œI always am.”
    â€œExcept when you’re being a beast, which has happened. Anyway, I am glad to see you. Sit down, and we’ll have a drink to celebrate. We live in the same city a few streets apart, and we’re more or less strangers.”
    â€œI’ve been busy, mother,” Tom explained. “Very busy.”
    â€œOf course you have. You’re a throwback, Thomas. You remind me of your great-grandfather who began as a placer miner in fifty. But he soon discovered that one can’t pan gold fast enough to become really rich, and so he became a usurer, lending out his gold at three