The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,461

people can understand? And so you’ll want control, and for that you are a fool.

She cleared her throat, ignoring the revealing manner in which Ryan made his hands into a church steeple just beneath his chin and stared at her hard with his marble blue eyes.

“You’re underestimating me,” she said in a monotone, her eyes sweeping the group. “I’m not underestimating you. I only want to know what’s involved here. I cannot remain passive. It would be irresponsible to remain passive.”

Moments of silence. Pierce lifted his coffee cup and drank without a sound.

“But what we’re really talking about,” said Ryan calmly and courteously, the steeple having fallen, “to be completely practical here, you understand, is that one can live in queenly luxury on a fraction of the interest earned by the reinvestment of a fraction of the interest earned by the reinvestment of … et cetera, if you follow me, without the capital ever being touched in any incidence or for any reason … ”

“Again, I cannot be passive, nor complacent, nor negligently ignorant. I do not believe that I should be any of those things.”

Silence, and once again Ryan to break it. Conciliatory and gentlemanly. “What specifically would you like to know?”

“Everything, the nuts and bolts of it. Or perhaps I should say the anatomy. I want to see the entire body as if it were stretched on a table. I want to study the organism as a whole.”

A quick exchange of glances between Randall and Ryan. And then Ryan again. “Well, that’s perfectly reasonable but it may not be as simple as you imagine … ”

“Yet there must be a beginning to it somewhere, and at some point, an end.”

“Well, undoubtedly, but I think you’re envisioning this, if I may say so, in the wrong way.”

“One thing specifically,” she said. “How much of this money goes into medicine? Are there any medical institutions involved?”

How startled they were. A declaration of war, it seemed, or so said the face of Anne Marie Mayfair, glancing at Lauren and then at Randall, in the first undisguised bit of hostility which Rowan had witnessed since she’d come to this town. The older Lauren, a finger hooked beneath her lower lip, eyes narrow, was too polished for such a display and merely looked fixedly at Rowan, her gaze now and then shifting very slowly to Ryan, who again began to speak.

“Our philanthropic endeavors have not in the past involved medicine, per se. Rather the Mayfair Foundation is more heavily involved with the arts and with education, with educational television in particular, and with scholarship funds at several universities, and of course we donate enormous sums through several established charities, quite independent of the Foundation, but all of this, you see, is carefully structured, and does not involve the release of the control of the money involved, so much as the release of the earnings … ”

“I know how that works,” Rowan said quietly. “But we are talking about billions, and hospitals, clinics, and laboratories are profit-making institutions. I wasn’t thinking of the philanthropic question, really. I was thinking of an entire area of involvement; which could have considerable beneficial impact upon human lives.”

How curiously cold and exciting this moment was. How private too. Rather like the first time she had ever approached the operating table and held the microinstruments in her own hands.

“We have not tended to go in the direction of medicine,” said Ryan with an air of finality. “The field would require intense study, it would require an entire restructuring … and Rowan, you do realize that this network of investments, if I may call it that, has evolved over a century’s time. This isn’t a fortune which can be lost if the silver market crashes, or if Saudi Arabia floods the world with free oil. We are talking about a diversification here which is very nearly unique in financial annals, and carefully planned maneuvers which have proven profitable through two world wars and numberless smaller upheavals.”

“I understand,” she said. “I really do. But I want information. I want to know everything. I can start with the paper you filed with the IRS, and move on from there. Perhaps what I want is an apprenticeship, a series of meetings in which we discuss various areas of involvement. Above all I want statistics, because statistics are the reality finally … ”

Again, the silence, the inner confusion, the glances ricocheting off each other. How small and crowded the room had become.

“You want my