Due Diligence: A Thriller (5 page)

Cynthia snorted.

Sammy ignored her. “What else? You married?”

“Not exactly.”

“Girlfriend?” He paused for an instant. “Boyfriend?”

“Girlfriend,” said Rob. “She’s an editor at a publishing house. Lascelle Press. It’s kind of a small imprint. You probably haven’t heard of it.”

“I lived on a Lascelles Avenue once,” said Cynthia.

“What do they publish?” asked Sammy.

“Fiction, mostly. The Great American Novel.” Rob grinned. “You got one in your drawer? They’re always looking for it.”

“She got a name?” asked Sammy. “Your girlfriend?”

“Emmy,” said Rob.

“Is she ready for this?”

“What?”

“For what you’re about to go through.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” said Cynthia. She smiled knowingly. “I just hope Emmy’s got a picture to remember you by.”

*   *   *

“The meeting with Leopard’s on Monday,” said Sammy to Rob when they were together again in the war room at seven o’clock the next morning. “That gives you three days to come up with a valuation. Here’s how you do it. Day one, you select companies that are comparable to Buffalo. Day two, you do a first estimate of their valuations. Sunday morning, you’ll refine it. By Sunday noon, you’ll have a first cut of the valuation grid for Buffalo. Sunday afternoon, you refine it again. Sunday night, it’s ready to go.”

Rob smiled. Yeah, he thought, and I might just solve world poverty and end global warming while I’m at it.

Sammy stared right back at him. Deadpan.

“How many comparable companies?” said Rob.

“I like to have twenty,” replied Sammy.

Twenty? Rob still wasn’t sure if Sammy was kidding.

“But this is a little rushed. Ten should do it for the first cut.” Sammy grabbed a piece of paper, flipped it horizontally, and ruled up a chart. Across the top he wrote the headings for a series of columns, saying the titles out loud as he wrote them: “Country, market share, market capitalization, earnings, employees, divisions, assets…” Sammy flipped it across to Rob when he was done. “Get that information, we’ll rank them, pick the ten most comparable.”

“So I should start with BritEnergy?”

“Buffalo,” Sammy corrected him. “We use the code names. And yes, you’re right, you should. Buffalo first. You need to know what you’re comparing with. Then go to the major stock indexes here, in Europe and Australasia, look at the electricity sectors, pick the names, and start working through them.” He pushed the ranking chart across the desk to Rob. “Remember what I said yesterday. If you’ve got a question, ask.” He turned to his own computer and began to scan whatever it was that was on his screen. “This isn’t an MBA case study. This is for real.”

By the time they sent out for pizza that night, Rob had a ranking chart of sorts for a list of companies, with a bunch of gaps. By the time Sammy called a halt at midnight, some of the gaps were filled.

“You’ve got enough,” said Sammy.

“But there’s all kinds of—”

“Eighty-twenty,” said Sammy. “Twenty percent of the effort gets you eighty percent of the way. You’ve heard of that, right?”

“Eighty-twenty,” said Cynthia mechanically from her desk. She turned around, weary, hollow-eyed. “Around here, you live or die by that.”

“Let’s look at what you’ve got,” said Sammy to Rob. “Print me out a copy.”

Sammy took the chart off the printer and glanced at it with an expert eye. “Not bad.” He picked up his pen. “We’ll take this one,” he said, circling the name of a German electricity supplier called ERON. “This one in Britain. This one.” He circled more names. “This one. This one. This one. This one. These. This one. These two.” He paused, surveying the data. “And this one here, in Australia.” He pushed the chart back to Rob.

Rob counted the circles. Fourteen. That morning, Sammy had said he only wanted ten.

He looked up. Sammy was watching him. Rob didn’t say anything.

After he left, he got a cab to Emmy’s apartment.

He was exhausted. Dead beat. He sprawled in the back of the cab, watching the buildings going by outside. He thought about the names on the ranking chart he had produced. He had been so caught up in the work, he hadn’t had time to think. But suddenly it struck him that it was an incredible amount of information, an incredible amount of stuff he’d learned. A lot of it was a blur, but through the blur were some definite shapes, definite areas of knowledge. He knew about the industry, the whole global industry. And it wasn’t just the information he’d gathered, but
how
he’d done it, how he’d managed to get coverage of the industry so quickly. The sheer pace of it was the biggest learning experience of all. Only now, comparing what he knew when he walked into the war room that morning with what he knew when he walked out, did he understand how much he had actually covered in a single day. If someone had asked him before he started, he probably would have said it would take a week.

He smiled. That was really something.

The cab moved up Eighth. It stopped at a set of lights somewhere in the Fifties. On the corner across the street, a bunch of people were lining up to get into a club.

Sammy had told him to be back at seven. Seven o’clock on a Saturday morning. With fourteen selected companies to value. In one day.

A guy with a shaved head stood at the door outside the club. His scalp gleamed yellow in the lamplight. Rob saw him say something. A couple of girls at the front of the line laughed. Rob watched them. It was one o’clock on a Friday night. Those people were out having fun, and he was in a cab after eighteen hours shut up in an airless room with maybe five hours’ sleep ahead of him before he had to be back there again. He should have been pissed.

But he wasn’t. Rob realized that he didn’t envy the people outside the club one bit. Instead, he felt a strange exhilaration. He had worked plenty of late nights at Roller Waite, but he had never felt like this, not once in his time there. This is what he’d gone to Cornell for. This is what he had studied two years and gone deeper and deeper into debt to do.

Maybe it was tiredness playing games with his mind in the back of the cab that Friday night, but when he thought about the war room, Rob couldn’t wait to get back there.

7

The thunderclouds had been building up all afternoon. Storms are frequent in October on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The tropical air became denser, the sky darker. Finally, at around six o’clock, the storm broke. Thunder rolled through the air, forks of lightning jagged across the sky. The fronds of palm trees bent back until they were almost snapping. A wall of water came down, drenching the streets of the colonial town of Cartagena. The rain swept across the tarmac of the airport outside the city, pelting into the sleek white shape of the executive jet that was parked there for the second day running.

The rain went on for hours. Downtown, in the casinos of the Bocagrande district, no one noticed.

Tourists favored the Las Vegas–style places like the Casino Royale. But there were others. The Casino del Rio didn’t admit yankee tourists in shorts. It had no slot machines. Its open gaming room was small, with only a dozen tables. The clients who went upstairs came with recommendation. Eduardo Velazquez, the general manager, knew their likes and dislikes, and made sure that each was catered to.

Velazquez came out of his office. He was a small, fine-boned man, dark-complexioned, with thin black hair slicked back from his forehead. He walked along the corridor on the upper floor. Each room in the casino was named for one of the rivers of South America and decorated with murals of river scenes. Velazquez stopped at the Orinoco Room and went inside. He exchanged a glance with the croupier, then with the auditor, who had discreetly called him from his office. The serving girl, Concepción, was out of the room, getting a drink for one of the clients.

Velazquez stood unobtrusively beside the auditor. With a practiced eye, he appraised the value of the chips in the middle of the table. Eighty thousand dollars. Two of the men at the table were Colombian. One was a son of one of the wealthiest ranching families in the country, claiming ancestry of pure blood back to sixteenth-century Spain. Eduardo Velazquez doubted that. No one’s blood in Colombia is pure. The young man was pale, thin, with elegant hands. Usually, those hands put down more chips than they picked up. The second Colombian was shorter, darker, pockmarked. The source of his wealth was shady. Narcotrafficking was rumored. Velazquez had no idea if this was true. In Colombia, whenever the origin of a man’s wealth is unknown, cocaine is mentioned. Whatever the source of his money, at least ten times a year he would come to the Del Rio to squander it. He always had a cigar in his mouth. The air of the room was heavy with its smoke.

The third man at the table was a fat Brazilian businessman. When he was finished at the table, he would expect to take to his room the girl who was serving the drinks. He liked the girls to be young, tall, and with short hair. Velazquez knew this. The Brazilian would pay five hundred dollars for the pleasure. Concepción was willing.

The fourth man was an American. A good-looking man, healthy in the way of a certain kind of American, with a full head of silver hair. He came to the Del Rio four times a year to play poker. His particular preference was that there should be no other Americans at his table. Each time, Eduardo Velazquez arranged it.

The American had taken two cards; each of the others had taken one. The Brazilian folded right away. Velazquez knew his style. A real man when he had a paid-for woman in his bed, but he didn’t have the balls to carry through a bluff. Concepción came back with a drink for him. His hand wandered over her ass as she put it down.

The narcotrafficker put twenty thousand on the table. The young rancher thought better of his hand and put down his cards. That left the American. Velazquez watched from beside the auditor. An interesting matchup, these two. The narcotrafficker, Velazquez knew, was like a street dog, a real mongrel. He would bluff with such aggression and back it up with so much cash that he could sap the confidence of almost any opponent. The American was harder to read. A smarter player. But there was something about a mongrel that makes him hard to beat.

The American watched the narcotrafficker for a moment. Then he put twenty on the table, and another twenty.

“I’ll raise you,” he said.

The narcotrafficker exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke. He put twenty on the table. Then he gazed at the American with narrowed eyes, toying with a set of chips in one hand. He muttered something in Spanish to the son of the rancher, who smiled. The narcotrafficker raised one eyebrow at the American. The American didn’t react.

He put three twenty-thousand-dollar chips on the table. “I raise
you
.”

Bluff, thought Velazquez. Must be. He had nothing.
Nada.
But it would cost the American more than sixty thousand dollars to find out.

Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars on the table now.

The American put down sixty thousand. Then he put down one more chip. Ten thousand.

“I’ll see you,” he said.

The narcotrafficker put down his cigar. One by one, he turned over his cards. Two sixes. Two twos. And a seven.

The American nodded slightly to himself. He threw down his cards.

The narcotrafficker laughed lustily. He muttered something to the son of the rancher. The younger man grinned.

Eduardo Velazquez was surprised. He wondered whether the narcotrafficker thought he had been bluffing. Probably. Two pairs. But it was the American who had been bluffing. It was hard to beat the narcotrafficker that way. That was what the American should have learned. If he was smart, he would remember that. The narcotrafficker would do the same thing next time, and the time after. He only played one way. Bluff harder and harder still. You could lose to him to start with, but after a while, if you had the money to keep going, you could turn him to your advantage.

Still, if the cards were unkind to you, nothing would help.

The American got up. “I’m going to take a breather,” he said to the croupier.

“Will you come back,
señor
?” asked the croupier.

“Sure. Just give me a few minutes.”

Velazquez went to the door.

“Caballeros?”
said the croupier to the other players.

“Vamos,”
said the narcotrafficker impatiently, and he threw a twenty-thousand-dollar chip on the table.

Velazquez opened the door for the American and followed him out.

“You would like to speak with me?” said Velazquez when he had closed the door behind him.

The American nodded.

“This way,
señor
.”

Velazquez led him down the corridor into his public office. From there a door led to his private office, into which no one but Eduardo Velazquez himself ever entered.

Velazquez showed him to a seat, then waited.

“I’m kind of stuck here, Eduardo.”

“Yes?”

“I’m pretty much at the limit, right?”

The manager nodded. He knew already that the other man was at the limit of the credit he had with the casino. That was the reason the auditor had called Velazquez to the room. The ten-thousand-dollar chip with which the American had seen the narcotrafficker’s hand had been the last one he had. He was two hundred and fifty thousand down on the night.

The American shook his head. “Lady Luck’s gone AWOL on me here. Not a single decent hand all night. That’s gotta change.”

Velazquez didn’t say anything. There was nothing he hadn’t heard before, about why a person wins, or doesn’t win, and why only one more hand will surely see him winning again.

The American gazed at the rug, talking to himself more than to the manager who was watching him. “Thought I was gonna get it all back on that one. I only needed one for a straight. Instead I get a pair, and he’s sitting there with two.” He laughed disbelievingly. “Hell, he thought he was bluffing me!”

Velazquez waited. “What shall I do, Mr. Wilson?” he asked eventually. “Shall I call Mr. Prinzi?”