"I haven't heard anything yet," Sanders said.

"Uh-huh. But it's going to happen?"

"I haven't heard anything, Eddie."

"Is it true they're going to shut down the Austin plant?"

Sanders was so startled, he burst out laughing. "What?"

"Hey, that's what they're saying down here, Tommy boy. Conley-White is going to buy the company and then shut us down."

"Hell," Sanders said. "Nobody's buying anything, and nobody's selling anything, Eddie. The Austin line is an industry standard. And it's very profitable."

He paused. "You'd tell me if you knew, wouldn't you, Tommy boy?" "Yes, I would," Sanders said. "But it's just a rumor, Eddie. So forget it. Now, what's the line problem?"

"Diddly stuff. The women on the production line are demanding that we clean out the pinups in the men's locker room. They say it's offensive to them. You ask me, I think it's bull," Larson said. "Because women never go into the men's locker room."

"Then how do they know about the pinups?"

"The night cleanup crews have women on 'em. So now the women working the line want the pinups removed."

Sanders sighed. "We don't need any complaints about being unresponsive on sex issues. Get the pinups out."

"Even if the women have pinups intheirlocker room?"

"Just do it, Eddie."

"You ask me, it's caving in to a lot of feminist bullshit." There was a knock on the door. Sanders looked up and saw Phil Blackburn, the company lawyer, standing there. "Eddie, I have to go." "Okay," Eddie said, "but I'm telling you-" "Eddie, I'm sorry. I have to go. Call me if anything changes." Sanders hung up the phone, and Blackburn came into the room. Sanders's first impression was that the lawyer was smiling too broadly, behaving too cheerfully. It was a bad sign.

Philip Blackburn, the chief legal counsel for DigiCom, was a slender man of forty six wearing a dark green Hugo Boss suit. Like Sanders, Blackburn had been with DigiCom for over a decade, which meant that he was one of the "old guys," one of those who had "gotten in at the beginning." When Sanders first met him, Blackburn was a brash, bearded young civil rights lawyer from Berkeley.