Takeover

by Forrest Evers

Overview

In the corporate jungle, only the most ruthless survive.

In New York, the chief executive officer of an entertainment conglomerate dives into the corporate swimming pool and never resurfaces. In Indiana, a tank deliberately crashed into the exclusive suburban home of a pharmaceutical company CEO, crushing him. Across the country, the most powerful business leaders are being murdered—top executives who've reaped multimillion-dollar stock options and the acclaim of Wall Street by eliminating the jobs and livelihoods of thousands.

Veteran FBI agent Elmer Lockart and his bright ambitious assistant race to find answers, yet only discover more questions as the investigation deepens. Is it revenge? Or a ruthless takeover plot? Is business the target, or does the plan reach further—into the deepest levels of society and government? Against impossible odds they must locate the ultimate corporate hatchet man: the killer who is downsizing American business—from the top.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061057847
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/05/1998
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.96(d)

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Faces flattened in the windows, oil drooling from its exhaust pipe, the bus waited for the light at the cornor of forty-seventh and Lex.

Heat radiatedfrom the buildings, the street and the bronze sky. It was a rate and perfect double 99 in Now York City: 99 degrees Fahrenheit, 94 percent humidity. Thank God it, was Friday.

office workers poured out of the tall buildings onto the sidewalks, sneaking out a couple of minutes before noon to, get the I jump on the crowd, grab a quick bite, maybe get in a little shopping before running back to their desk. They hit a wall of sweat and-diesel-stained steam and kept. going shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Fossils of mastication like juicy Fruit, Dentyne, Dubble Bubble, and Black Jack, spit out years ago and bonded as one with die concrete, swelled, melted and, stuck democratically to the Wes lot Ferragamos and Wal-Mart flip-flops with equal tenacity.

The traffic light went green, the old bus groaned, into the intersection knelt down and died in a spreading pool of hot, glistening oil. Horns sang in all directions. When the lights changed again, a freshly painted, pea green, deeply fragrant garbage truck with a car door stuck in its grille like a dog carrying a bone charged into the intersection.

Chucky Rembrada, behind the wheel of the Brentanamo's Sanitation Services truck, first time driving in Manhattan, second day on the job, sitting on a phone book so he could see over the dashboard, trying to figure how to get the hell over to the East River Drive. Get the hell out of the damn traffic. Looking left to check the one-way sign on Forty-seventh as his grille guardsnagged the wide-open door of Felix Santoya's '68 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Felix was about to get out. Fuckin' truck ripped the door right out of his hand.

Felix sat amazed for a moment, showing A wide band of stomach between the hem of his T-shirt and the top of his blue jeans. He was holding on, to the steering wheel With one hand while the other, which had been-holding the door handle, was extended-like a farewell wave to his car door.

Chucky saw the bus loom over his horizon and stomped the brakes. The big truck stopped two inches short of ramming the bus broadside with a flourish of squealing tires and hissing air brakes. Felix was out of the Cadillac, running, pounding on the side of the garbage truck, thinking he was going to get the sonofabitch, rip his face off with his bare hands. That truck was going nowhere.

Midtown traffic halted its funereal procession for a moment, then stopped for good. Blocked solid. Heat, carbon monoxide, water vapor, petroleum fumes, and the scent of hot-garbage (a top note of rotting orange over a deep, resonant base line of liquefying chicken) rose I up in syrupy, waves from the clogged river of overheating fossil fuel burners. It was the day of the Greif Lexington Avenue Lockdown. Gridlock spread from block to block like short circuits in the national power grid until it reached the front page of the evening papers and the prime opening spot on the six o'clock news.

Forty-three stories overhead, on the top floor of the Americon Communications Building, the air was cool, filtered and as fresh as a summer day in the Adirondacks 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 42 percent humidity. And lightly scented with fresh bouquets of tuberose and pink and white jasmine in crystal vases. CEO Don Cannon did not hear the taxi horns singing like wounded buffalo, in the canyon below. And even if he did, he had other concerns. Don, handsome, sleek dark hair combed back, jaw muscles working, was standing at his desk in his shirtsleeves, talking on the speakerphone to Hill Yates, CEO of Unicorn, one of a ,number of publishers Americon owns, along with Olympic Pictures, DMI Publications (America's second largest, magazine publisher), the Tribune Newspaper Group, the United Television- network, Monarch Auto Parts Group and, the Imperial Insurance and Financial Services Group. Unicorn represents less than one half of I percent of Americon's total revenue, but Unicorn is not unimportant. Nothing in the Americon corporate mix is unimportant to Don Cannon. Don peered at the large monitor on his desk. "You're looking the same figures l am, Bill" Don said. "And what they tell me is that your troops am eating us alive."

Even by the Versailles standards of American corporate decor, Don's office was impressive. It had that greatest of luxuries in any city, the symbol of power in every corporate office: Spam. From his floor-to-ceiling windows Dow looked across the East River toward La...

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James Patterson

"A winning idea...Takeover is a fast paced read."