Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Yeah, this is Ben Goralsky talking. All right, I’ll hold on… Hello, hello…” At the other end he could hear someone talking, and then he realized the voice was not talking to him but to someone else in the other room at the other end.

“Mr. Goralsky? Ted Stevenson speaking.”

“Oh, hello Ted, nice to hear your voice. Where you calling from?”

“From our offices.”

“On Sunday? Don’t you guys ever stop working?”

“There are no regular hours and no days off for top management in this company, Mr. Goralsky, not when there’s important business to be done. And if you join us, you’ll work the same way.”

Goralsky had an inkling of the purpose of the call, and the implication of the “if” was not lost on him.

“We were going to call you yesterday, as a matter of fact,” Stevenson went on, “but we knew it was your holiday and assumed you would be at your synagogue.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t go. I was right here all the time. My father took sick, and with a man that age-”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?”

“He’s all right now, but for a while it was kind of like touch and go.”

“Well, I’m delighted to hear he’s on the mend. Give the old gentleman our regards and best wishes for his recovery.”

“Thanks. He’ll be pleased.”

The voice at the other end shifted gears abruptly. “We have been somewhat disturbed over here, Mr. Goralsky, over the action of your stock in the last week or so.”

“Yeah, well, Ted, you know how it is. Rumors of a merger get out. We tried to keep it mum at this end, and as far as I know no one here has leaked. But when your crew came down, someone may have recognized somebody in your party-I tell you, when it first got back to me, you could have knocked me over with a feather. But I guess that’s the way it is in these things-”

“No, Mr. Goralsky, that’s not the way it is. We know that there always are rumors preceding a merger, and that can affect your stock. But your stock has climbed so precipitously, we did a little investigating. We inquired among some of our good friends in the market down in Boston, and we learned that the reason for the climb was not the rumor of a merger with us but some new process.”

“Well, that turned out to be a dud, I guess,” said Ben unhappily.

“So we discovered on further inquiry. Of course these things happen from time to time in any R and D program, but if we thought that it was deliberately engineered for the purpose of increasing the value of your stock preliminary to the merger, we would regard that as-er-sharp practice, and would be forced to reconsider the entire proposition.”

“And I wouldn’t blame you Mr. Stevenson, but I give you my word-”

The other cut him off unceremoniously. “We’re not interested in explanations or excuses. What we want from you is…”

When Ben finally hung up, he was dripping with perspiration. For a long time thereafter he sat staring at the telephone.