The Lily Gilders

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“We could threaten to move our headquarters out of the country,” Rossi snarled. He paused, contemplatively, to savor the thought, then added, “That’d serve ’em right, with all the taxes we pay and all the jobs we supply—yeh!”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Rossi,” the lawyer countered. Joe Duffy had expected precisely that reaction—not those exact words, of course, but something dose. He didn’t like Martino Rossi to start with. Rossi had the temperament of a two-year-old and the morals of a pubic louse. Duffy endured Rossi only for the sake of the firm.

He knew then that if he didn’t immediately back this statement up with facts that even Rossi could comprehend there would be another of those distasteful outbursts like the one with which this conversation began.

“It’s not just your company that’s taking hits from the environmentalists, Mr. Rossi,” he said in the most soothing tone he could manage, “the heat’s on everybody. The movement is worldwide, and it’s gaining strength every day. If you were mining anywhere else but where you are it would be bad enough, but a smelting plant in the Amazon Basin is an anathema to these people. The public perceives this as a part of the destruction of the rain forest. They don’t like it.”

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