Read (1982) The Almighty for Free Online Page B

nearby advertising offices. For the time being, he had allowed managing editor Ollie McAllister and assistant managing editor Jim Crutchfield to remain in their glassed-in-cubicles.
    Now, this early third afternoon following the funeral, Edward Armstead, having finished his box lunch (tomato and lettuce on wheat bread, a dill pickle, a spinach salad, a diet drink - he had decided to diet to make himself even more
    attractive for Kim Nesbit) summoned his personal secretary and asked her to remove the cardboard box.
    As Estelle placed the empty paper plates and cup into the box, Armstead retrieved a toothpick and began to use it as he surveyed the forty-foot office.
    From the door Estelle said, ‘It’s beginning to look right, Mr. Armstead.’ She indicated the stretch of office.
    Armstead gave a nod of assent. ‘Yes, I think we’ve got it in shape.’
    After his secretary had gone, Armstead glanced about the spacious office once more. In his shirt sleeves, behind the formidable oak desk, he was pleased with what he saw. It was beginning to look right, his own office, no longer E. J.‘s. Most of the reminders of his father had been eradicated. For one thing, the wall decorations. During the preceding two days he and Estelle and a newspaper handyman had taken down all of his father’s favorite framed photographs, laminated honor scrolls, and French paintings. Gone from the Irish linen matte wallpaper were E. J.‘s pictures of himself, self-styled ‘the Giant,’ with five United States Presidents, with foreign royalty, with baseball superstars, with movie and television luminaries. Only one photograph had been allowed to remain hanging, a portrait of Edward Armstead’s mother taken with Edward himself at the age of fourteen.
    Since Armstead’s own pictures with celebrities and his framed awards had been pitifully few, he had filled the empty spaces with artistic photographs by Julia Cameron, Stieglitz, and Steichen, and substituted for his father’s Matisses, Picassos, Cezannes his own favorite Yugoslavian primitives, Generalic, Rabuzin, Lackovic, a gaudy collection of nai’fs acquired on several visits to Hlebine, Zagreb, and Belgrade.
    Armstead cast his gaze further about the room. The fern planters on either side of the sliding doors that led to a balcony overlooking Park Avenue were new. The ultramodern seventy-two-inch television screen before the fireplace was also new. The pull-up rattan chairs before the oak desk had taken the place of his father’s pompous leather ones. The desk top itself, always kept clean by his father, Armstead had defiantly cluttered with mementos - ivory miniatures from Tokyo, tiny military figures from Paris, several small bronze golf trophies from St. Andrews, an
    ancient coin in a velvet-lined case from Masada.
    Of the larger pieces, only his father’s custom-made oak desk retained its place. There had been magic here once. Armstead had not wished to tamper with magic.
    His housekeeping inspection done, Armstead directed his sight toward his desk calendar and was suddenly eager to get going. His father’s will had made him extremely sensitive to the passage of time. He reached for his ivory-colored computer telephone, pressed the ICM button and then the intercom code for Harry Dietz’s private telephone.
    ‘Harry, I’m ready for the meeting. Bring Bruce with you.’
    ‘Be right in, Chief. We have everything set.’
    A few minutes later Harry Dietz and Bruce Harmston appeared, Dietz carrying a handful of folders, and Armstead motioned his lieutenants to the rattan chairs across from his desk. Armstead felt comfortable with them, the only persons, besides his secretary, he depended upon. Certainly his reliance on Dietz was without equivocation.
    Dietz was the taller of the two, with sandy hair, a chalky complexion, an adenoidal smile, and a smooth, suave manner. Harmston had a rounder face, receding hairline, bulbous nose, and lots of chin. Neither was as creative as Armstead,