Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 (7 page)

Chapter 14

“She went into his room. She said she had some business to attend to but that’s Travis’ room. Why did she do that?”

“Pipe down and follow me.” Leo steered Bobby down the corridor to his suite.

“I need to go see what she’s doing.”

“Don’t be stupid, son. You know what she’s doing. I told you about her before you let your hormones dictate to your brain and went ahead and married her anyway.” Leo shoved Bobby toward the couch.

“But—”

“Shut up and listen to me. That woman is nothing but trouble.”

“She’s okay. It’s just…I need to see—”

“Tell me she hasn’t spent every dime you’ve got and some you don’t. You stay with that slut and you are doomed. Now, tell me about the stock that Travis Parizzi bought.”

“I told you, I sold it to him. I have an option to buy it back, though.” Leo stared at the boy and waited. “I can have it back inside a year.”

“What’s he charging you to take it back?”

“He said there were fees and things. I don’t know, transfer fees and stuff. He said I could buy it back for what he paid for it plus ten percent.”

“That’s a nice return on investment in a year, especially since I bet he squeezed you on the price and he knows you’ll never find the funds to do it. Not with that whore you’re married to raiding the cookie jar all the time.”

“Brenda’s not a whore.”

“No? Then what’s she doing now in Travis’ room, playing canasta?”

Bobby slumped down in the sofa and hung his head. His hands dangled between his knees. “I don’t know.”

Leo lighted a cigar and paced the room. Something was up and he needed to know what. He’d scoped out Farrah’s scheme early on and believed he had it under control, tumbled to it early, by God, the dumb suck. But Travis cutting in behind his back, he had not seen that coming.

“What’d he say to you when he asked about the stock?”

“What?”

“I said, what did he say to you then? Did he mention what he wanted it for?”

“Something about a vote. He wasn’t very clear. Hell, I don’t know. I had debts and at least one loan shark on my case. I needed the money, so I sold it.”

“He said a vote. You’re sure of that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, like, there’s a meeting coming up soon or something. Maybe it had to do with the IPO.”

“And you thought you’d let him play with your stock for a year and then you’d buy it back.”

“Well—”

“Shut up and let me think.”

“I need to find out what Brenda is doing.”

“Sit still. You want to know what she’s doing? Put your ear to the wall. They’re next door. But don’t you leave this room. I’m not done with you.”

Bobby seemed to consider putting an ear to the wall, rose, and then sat down again with a groan. Leo studied the young man on the sofa and scowled. He didn’t like Bobby very much. He thought him a fool for marrying the tramp from the night club and an even bigger fool for letting himself fall into the kind of debt he acquired. His promise to the boy’s mother notwithstanding, his first impulse was to toss him to the wolves. But as he had learned from one moussed, moronic, motivational speaker, that every failure carries within it the seeds of an equal or greater benefit. Bobby Griswold could be useful at the moment. He would help him.

“Listen to me, boy. Here’s what you need to do.”

***

Travis Parizzi and Brenda Griswold were within fifteen feet of Leo and Bobby. Had they been aware of that fact, they might have been more discreet. But they were caught up in their own conniving and sublimely unaware of their potential for destruction. Brenda might have discounted the danger, but Travis had been around Leo Painter long enough to recognize it, had he known.

Travis decided the woman could be trusted with what he planned. He did not fool himself about her fundamental dishonesty. She would sell him out in a New York minute, but he also knew she would be driven by self-interest and would work with him as long as the rewards outweighed the consequences.

“It’s like this,” he said, “Leo is losing his grip. Somehow, he’s got it in his head that licensing ActiVox will save the company’s copper and nickel division. A down economy doesn’t even register on him. ‘Cheap nickel and copper,’ he says. ‘We capture the market by selling low. Low enough to stay in business until things get back to normal.’”

“What’s that to me?”

“Between us, with the stock I bought from Bobby, we control enough stock to move him out. I take over the company, make some restructuring moves, and we jump into the black. Minerals are dead. Alternate forms of energy are in. This country we’re visiting has gas reserves. We need to be talking to the minister about drilling, not mining copper and nickel.”

“I still ain’t heard anything that makes me moist, pal.”

“Stay with me, here. I can do this without you, by the way. You won’t have the money in time to buy me out, and the deal is with Bobby, not you, anyway.”

“He’ll do what I tell him.”

“Yeah? Well, even if you don’t get him to go along, there are other places I can go to get the votes I need.”

“Bullshit, Parizzi, You must think I believe in the Easter Bunny, too.”

Travis sighed and wondered if it was even worth the effort to recruit this woman. But the truth of the matter, it would be infinitely easier to pull the thing off with Griswold’s stock than without it. And there was the problem of timing. He plunged ahead.

“Do you know Leo’s story—how he took over the company?” Travis didn’t wait for an answer. “He married Harry Reilly’s daughter to get a job, made a career, then forced Reilly out and dumped his daughter. He has spent the last decade trying to buy up the Reilly family holdings. That old man’s dead, and the rest of the family would shoot Leo on sight if they had the chance. About 10 percent of the outstanding shares are in their hands, by the way. Leo has used shadow companies and straw men to get those shares but so far has failed. Did you know that one of the Reilly grandsons works for Leo? His name is Bart Polanski and he’s in Engineering. He’s staying in this hotel. He will vote the Reilly stock for me if I need it. I have other options out there as well. They all have a cost, but I can exercise them. I will level with you, Brenda. It’s easier with Bobby’s stock, but even without it, it’s doable.”

Brenda sat and waited for Travis to get to the part where she could cash out. He stared blinking and then went on, “I’m guessing you want the stock to sell to either someone wanting in before the IPO, or after that, which could produce a big payday for you. Half a payday, if you decided to dump Robert or he decides to dump you.”

“Not going to happen, Travis. That kid is, like, a Brenda addict. I can do things for him that makes his brain turn to yogurt, so forget that.”

“Still, it’s a one-gun bullet. You sell and boom it’s over. No more cash cow. I happen to know Bobby’s debt profile. It’ll all be gone in a week. Dump or not to dump, you end up with zip. Are you with me so far?”

“Like, what do you want from me?”

“First, you need to leave the boy. He’s never going to make it for you. He has a trust fund that you go through in a month. He is basically unemployable at any level beyond flipping burgers at some fast food joint. Leo has kept him on as a charity. When I take over, he’s toast. And I will take over.”

“Not so fast. You know what’s in Leo’s will?”

“I do. Do you?”

“Yep. When Leo dies, we get a bundle.”

“After the public offering, it will be preferred stock and an income for you. Do you really want to live on dividends? What happens in a down economy when there are no dividends? I’m telling you this now, and nobody else knows this yet, I’ve seen the books. There are no dividends this year. If the IPO goes through there will be none for the foreseeable future.”

“But Farrah said—”

“Henry Farrah is a lawyer. He doesn’t know squat about business. That’s why Leo is about to bust his balls when we get home.”

“But the public offering, the IPO, what about that?”

“It’s a maybe. I can’t always read Leo, but I think he has something up his sleeve. That’s why we need to move fast when we get back to Chicago.”

“And the will?”

“There are wills, and there are wills. Do you really think Leo will let the old one he drew up two years ago stand? There is another will, you can count on it.”

“What’s it say?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know for sure if there is one, but Leo is sneaky. Don’t count on that buzzard sending anything good your way.

Brenda turned the information over in her mind, seemed to make a decision.

“Let’s talk about you and me.” She leaned back on one elbow on the bed and smiled.

Chapter 15

He was upwind so that the hyenas’ scent did not carry to him, but Sekoa sensed them. Every nerve in his diseased body jangled and urged him to move onward. They were tracking him, an easy task for them given his deteriorating physical state. He kept padding along the river until he encountered a fence. He could be cornered there. The hyenas would not attack him as long as he could turn and move. But if he were to stop or be backed up…He shifted his weight from right to left. On his left, the river shimmered and rippled in the moonlight. His instincts told him to stay clear of the water. The crocodiles might be dormant in the dark, and they might not. Knowledge of their habits did not register in the instinctual portion of his brain. On the other hand, swimming he did only
in extremis
. He turned to his right and headed away from the water, following the fence line south. The scent of humans began to fade as he turned his back on the town. The hyenas seemed to be gaining.

After ten minutes of jogging his tuberculosis caught up with him and, gasping for breath, he stopped. Ears up, listening, he faced back the way he’d come. The hyenas had reached the fence and were moving up from the water toward him. He moved forward a few meters and spotted a gap in the fence, probably made by elephants on one of their sojourns into Kasane to forage for fermented morula fruit. He slipped through and backtracked toward the river until he met the pack of hyenas bearing uphill toward him, but on the other side of the fence. He stopped and faced them, daring them to come for him. They stared back at him through the steel mesh. One after another three of the pack charged the fence and bounced off. One chewed at the links in frustration. The lion rose and moved further downhill and away from the gap. The enraged hyenas followed him yipping and yowling. After a few dozen meters he turned and continued east toward the human smell. He caught the scent of goats as well. Goats were food.

The hyenas raced along the fence line, half of them south and the other half north, back toward the river. Unless some easy prey diverted them, they would find the gap soon enough and follow. He hoped the proximity of humans would eventually cause them to turn back.

Had Sekoa a sense of irony he might have appreciated the circumstances that sent him to seek protection from the very beings that, although he and his kind fascinated them, would kill him in a heart beat had they known he was loose in what passed for their territory. He trotted on.

***

Leo had been pacing for nearly an hour, asking questions Bobby couldn’t answer and puffing on a seemingly endless series of cigars. Bobby supposed they were expensive. He wouldn’t know. He didn’t smoke, except for the occasional joint, and though smoke usually didn’t bother him, by the time Leo fired up another cigar, it began to take its toll on his respiratory system.

“I gotta go.” Bobby stood and headed for the door.

“Stay put. I may need you.”

“Can I at least open a window? You’re killing me with that cigar fog.”

Leo gestured toward a set of French doors and continued pacing. Bobby considered listening at the wall. The hotel may have been one of Gaborone’s best, but sound still carried through it.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

“We?”

“Just listen. I told your mother I’d take care of you and even though my instincts are to make good on my intention to fire you, I think we can help each other.”

Bobby looked hopefully at the man in front of him while straining his ears to make out any sounds from the room next door.

“How?”

“First, you dump that wife of yours.”

“Dump Brenda? I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can and now is the best time to do it.”

“But…”

“Will you stop saying
can’t
for once and listen. If you weren’t such an idiot, you’d be worth some real money by now, and that little gold-digger would be divorcing you instead. Now, if you divorced she’d get at least half of what you have. But idiotically you stumbled into the perfect set-up. You don’t have a dime. Your debts exceed your assets and, as of today, you don’t even have a job. She might be awarded some alimony, but with no income and no prospects, she’ll be happy to settle for some cash.”

Bobby started to say something, but Leo shushed him.

“Then, she might hold out for the stock that you sold to Travis, but since you won’t own it any more, there’s not much she can do about that either.”

“She said something about knowing what’s in your will. She could go for that.”

Leo smiled. “She must have been talking to Farrah. That’s even better. Wills can always be changed, if you catch my drift.” Bobby did not catch his drift or, indeed, much of anything else Leo was saying.

“But just in case she thinks about working the option deal with Travis and collecting, we’ll have to take that away from her, too.”

“I don’t know about an option deal. You mean she’d ask for half of whatever I could sell the…I don’t get it. How?” Bobby was warming up to the idea of being free from Brenda, but the thought of being penniless and unemployed still scared him.

“In a minute. You own or rent that condo of yours?”

“Rent, but I don’t see…‘

“You don’t have to. Don’t try to think your way through this, Robert. Leave the details to me. What’s in the condo? Any valuables?”

“Her jewelry and some art crap she bought.”

“She’d get the jewelry in any event.” Leo pondered a moment. “Unless we can arrange for a burglary. I’ll have to think about that. We’d have to split the proceeds fifty-fifty. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

“Split what with who?”

“Never mind. Now, if she goes for the stock, you won’t have an option to share with her because I’m going to redeem that stock from Travis before she knows what hit her. Well, actually, you are going to redeem it, but with my money. You will assign it to me first and, for your services, I pay you one hundred thousand dollars. See, you have a deal. So, if she comes sniffing around your financials all she’ll find is what’s left of the hundred grand. You with me so far?”

“I think so, but—”

“Good. Now, as for the grounds. I guess that’s easy enough. She’s next door boffing Travis, as far as we know. Sue for mental cruelty, adultery, and fiscal irresponsibility. I’ll get you an expensive lawyer, and he’ll make her go away cheap and be thankful.”

“But we don’t know that she’s…you know…with Parizzi.”

“I’m your witness. If we say she was, she was. We’ll say we were suspicious and went out on that balcony and peeked in and caught them
in flagrante delicto,
as the shysters would say, and it’s a done deal.”

“There’s an adjoining balcony?”

“Out those French doors, yes.”

Bobby rushed to the doors and worked at the latch.

“Too much noise. You don’t want them to know. Here this way.” Leo eased the latch, and the two stepped out on the balcony. Eight feet away a matching set of French doors gave in to Parizzi’s room. The curtains were not completely drawn, and they peered in.

“You satisfied now?” Leo whispered

“I’ll kill her.”

“Shhh, come back inside. We need to put some things on paper.”

Once inside Leo’s suite Bobby repeated his threat.

“Killing is a really bad idea, son. In the first place, I don’t think you have the guts to do it. And even if you did, Botswana is a capital-punishment country and its courts would not be reluctant to hang you, particularly if it deems the crime to have been premeditated. So, unless you can line up a really good hit man, you’d better stick to the divorce court.”

“I don’t know, I…”

“Just do as I say. Once this is over, I’ll find a job for you that you can actually do, and if you work at it instead of slacking, it could even lead to something better. Now, go back to your room and act like nothing happened.”

Leo sounded sincere. He always did when he was about to slice and dice, but Bobby didn’t know that and smiled his thanks instead.

The part of his brain that had to do with self-restraint was coated with Teflon, and “acting like nothing happened” did not stick.