What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel

by David Housewright

  * * *

  He had seen it before, the bridled excitement of shareholders about to attend a meeting where they would be told how much money they were going to make—or lose. It had always reminded him of gamblers waiting for the ball to drop into the roulette wheel or the dice to stop rolling on a craps table. Normally, Reinfeld would have disregarded the meeting and what was said there. He had attended more than his share in the past and had even conducted a few himself. He knew marketing when he saw it. Except this was different. The disappearance of Charles King had disrupted his plans. He didn’t know if he should accelerate them, put them on hold, discard them altogether, or dump his KTech stock and run like hell. Reinfeld had been hoping that the shareholders’ meeting would help him decide.

  While the other shareholders congregated near the entrances to the auditorium, anxious to get a seat near the front, Reinfeld stood off, content to remain in the back, hopefully unnoticed. While they were comparatively well-dressed, he looked as if he were preparing to clean his basement. While they seemed both surprised and delighted by the delicacies distributed by the waiters and waitresses on behalf of KTech’s marketing department, he sipped what he considered to be a mediocre white wine with quiet disdain. The contrast was intentional and carefully cultivated; it gave Reinfeld a sense not so much of superiority as personal pride. He wasn’t like the other shareholders after all, he told himself. He had built a multibillion-dollar investment fund. What had they done?

  Except for his black sports jacket, one man who caught Reinfeld’s eye seemed to have purposely dressed down almost as much as he had. Reinfeld watched him devour first a caramel and Chinese five-spice snickerdoodle and then follow it with a hazelnut chocolate mousse. He didn’t have a napkin, however, and since he was holding a craft beer with his other hand, he appeared confused as to how to wipe his fingers. Reinfeld offered his paper napkin.

  “Thank you,” the man said. He used the napkin to wipe his mouth and clean his fingers before depositing it in a wastebasket.

  “Did you enjoy the desserts?” Reinfeld asked.

  “Yes, I did, and since I’m pretty sure that our dividends are paying for them, I’m thinking of hijacking the bakery truck and taking it to my house. Want in?”

  Reinfeld thought that was awfully funny and nearly laughed. Instead, he stifled a smile and offered his hand.

  “Justus Reinfeld.”

  He spoke as if he had fully expected his fellow shareholder to recognize his name. The fact that he displayed no reaction whatsoever suggested to Reinfeld that the man knew exactly who he was and was pretending not to.

  “I’m McKenzie,” the shareholder said. “So, you come here often?”

  Reinfeld thought that was funny, too, yet again refrained from laughing.

  “No,” he said. “Like everyone else I’m here to see if Charles King rises miraculously from the dead like Lazarus.”

  “If he does, I’d sure like to chat with him.”

  “You and me both, brother. How many shares do you own?”

  “I have about four-point-seven percent in KTech, give or take.”

  Like a high-stakes poker player, Reinfeld had taught himself to keep his tells in check; to not give too much of himself away, only McKenzie’s answer had tripped all of the alarm bells in his head. He took a long pull of his cheap wine to hide his emotions even while telling himself that this man might actually be a brother.

  “So, you’ve been losing money, too, since King Charles disappeared,” Reinfeld said.

  “Haven’t you heard?” McKenzie said. “KTech’s stock price has been going up. Seems someone has been acquiring shares during these troubling times. I wonder why.”

  Reinfeld again turned to his wineglass for support, only it was empty. He glanced around for another tray loaded with drinks, saw a waitress, waved her over, and switched his empty glass for a full one while his mind raced. Reinfeld had all but convinced himself that this McKenzie knew exactly who he was and what he was contemplating.

  He took a sip of the wine.

  “I own exactly four-point-seven percent of KTech stock myself,” Reinfeld said.

  He took another sip.

  “What a coincidence,” McKenzie said.

  “I know three other shareholders who also control just under five percent.”

  “No kidding? Maybe we should start a club.”

  * * *

  “He’s parking,” H. B. Sutton said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Detective Jean Shipman replied.

  H. B.’s number had been second on the list of those captured by my cell phone the afternoon that I was shot. After briefing Bobby—he wasn’t sure he approved of how Shipman handled Elliot Sohm and Emma King, by the way. He said he might have been inclined to bring Elliot in, meaning he would have questioned her in the confines of the SPPD. He thought that the surroundings alone would have impressed on her the seriousness of the situation and might have even persuaded her to be more cooperative.

  “Or it could have convinced Elliot to demand her free phone call and dial D-A-D-D-Y,” Shipman said. “Certainly that’s what her BFF Emma would have told her to do, assuming she didn’t call the cavalry herself. Who knows what that might have led to, the Kings and all that money?”

  “You might be right. We’ll see.”

  While she was pleased that Bobby was pleased with her progress, Shipman was shocked when he called Greg Schroeder and asked him if he could suggest a way to brace Justus Reinfeld. Shipman had never seen or heard of Bobby reaching out to a PI before. Schroeder said he had an idea only he couldn’t share it without permission from his client. Bobby said to get back to them with whatever he learned. Schroeder said he would.

  After the conversation was concluded, Bobby asked Shipman what her next move would be. She said she was going to contact H. B. Sutton, which is what brought her to H. B.’s houseboat on the Mississippi River.

  Shipman had never been on a houseboat before and she felt uncomfortable, although she couldn’t explain why.

  “I call it the earthquake effect,” H. B. said. “The idea that the deck is constantly moving beneath our feet. Some people find it very disconcerting.”

  “I’ve been on boats before and it hasn’t bothered me.”

  “You’ve been on boats for only a few hours at a time, if that, usually with the sun and sky and water and the shoreline to orient you. Have you ever been inside a boat, sitting at a kitchen table and drinking coffee while unseen waves lap against the hull and make the boat bob just so?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “It takes some getting used to.”

  “How do you live here in the winter?”

  “That’s probably the most asked question I get,” H. B. said. “I heat the boat with space heaters.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “I have electricity.”

  “I get that, but…”

  “The boat is extremely well insulated, trust me on that. I have three electric heaters including a mini-fireplace that keeps the inside nice and toasty, plus an electric blanket in case of emergencies. Also, the boat has pretty great circulation and plenty of dry heat to prevent all my stuff from getting damp and growing mold. In some boats, the temperature difference between the inside and the outside can cause condensation to form everywhere. My neighbor, because of all the damp and mold in his boat, one day he discovered that all of the suits in his closet were wrinkled from condensation on just the one side facing the hull.

  “The outside—my boat is protected by bubblers, what we call these little underwater fountains that circulate the water to prevent ice from forming against the hull. That’s why I don’t get stuck in the ice all winter; why ice doesn’t crush my hull. The worst thing, the water is shut down on the docks because the pipes would freeze. So, I have to use long hoses from pumps on land to fill my water tanks, which is a major pain and makes for very short showers. That, along with shoveling snow off the deck, is my biggest gripe. It’s a small pr
ice to pay, though.”

  “Your home is very beautiful,” Shipman said.

  “Thank you.”

  “It just seems so isolated.”

  “That’s why I like it.”

  “What does McKenzie say about it?”

  “Like most people, he thinks it’s a great place to visit; he just wouldn’t want to live here.”

  “About McKenzie…”

  That’s when Shipman asked H. B. if she could remember what we talked about during the phone call I had made to her.

  “McKenzie wanted to know about a hedge fund manager he met named Justus Reinfeld who owns All Uppercase Investments.”

  “What about him?” Shipman asked.

  “He’s parking.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means—according to McKenzie, Reinfeld said that he and at least three other parties each held just under five percent of KTech stock. I can think of only one reason to do that. Reinfeld is trying to steal KTech from the King family. My theory, Detective Shipman…”

  “Call me Jean.”

  “Jean. Thank you. Jean, parking is a time-honored method that corporate raiders use when they wish to take over a company. In 1968, Congress passed what is known as the Williams Act. Along with the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, it demands that investors who own more than five percent of a company’s stock tell the SEC how many shares they own, the source of the funds used to purchase the shares, and the reason for the acquisition. ’Course, when you give the SEC this information, you’re also telling the company, and for obvious reasons raiders rarely want the company to know what they’re up to. So, what some of them do, maybe most, I don’t know, is hide their position in the company by transferring their shares to other parties, no one holding as much as five percent. That way neither the SEC nor the management of the company will know the true extent of their stock ownership. Then, when they’re ready to make their move, they’ll have the parties transfer the stock back to them, usually for a small profit, and boom. As I said, this is called parking and it’s illegal.”

  “If it’s illegal, why would Reinfeld tell McKenzie his plans?”

  “He didn’t tell McKenzie his plans. That’s just me figuring it out. He told McKenzie that he and the three others each owned just under five percent of the stock because McKenzie told him that he had four-point-seven percent of the stock and Reinfeld thought that meant McKenzie was on his side.”

  “Wait. McKenzie owns four-point-seven percent of KTech stock?” Shipman asked.

  “Oh hell no. Four-point-seven percent of McKenzie’s net worth is in KTech. It’s inappropriate for me to tell you that, privacy rules and all, but I don’t think he would mind.”

  “Thank you, Lord. McKenzie rich is a pain in the ass. Superrich he would be insufferable.”

  “Actually, I’ve always found him to be a pretty nice guy and I don’t know that many nice guys.”

  H. B. delivered the compliment as if she were challenging Shipman to contradict her. Instead, Shipman said, “It’s complicated,” and let it go at that.

  “For argument’s sake,” she said, “let’s assume that Reinfeld thought McKenzie owned four-point-seven percent of the stock and tried to enlist him in his scheme only to discover later that McKenzie didn’t own four-point-seven percent of the stock…”

  “I’d think he’d be very upset, wouldn’t you, believing that he had revealed valuable insider information to some sort of corporate spy? At best, McKenzie could use the information to enrich himself. At worst, he could take it to the King family. Or the SEC. In any case, Reinfeld and his plans would be compromised.”

  “Not if McKenzie was dead.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s more,” H. B. said.

  “More?”

  “McKenzie told me that he told Reinfeld that even if they—meaning Reinfeld and McKenzie—vacuumed up all of the outstanding shares in the company, the King family would still be the majority stockholders and could squash any plans they might have. Reinfeld told McKenzie, not if one of the Kings was willing to flip.”

  “Flip?”

  “Vote with Reinfeld and the other minority stockholders.”

  “Against their own people?”

  “It’s been done before.”

  “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”

  FOURTEEN

  “What happened next?” Greg Schroeder asked.

  Reinfeld began to pace slowly, his hands behind his back, careful not to cross the shaft of light to Schroeder’s side of the office.

  “We chatted about this and that,” he said. “Mostly about the King family. McKenzie said that he thought the Kings were very secretive. I told him I couldn’t agree or disagree. I had never met any of the Kings.”

  Schroeder couldn’t see Reinfeld’s eyes. He didn’t know if they were darting back and forth or if he was blinking rapidly or if Reinfeld had closed his eyes for more than a second or two before answering. Yet the way he kept looking upward to his left as if he was accessing his imagination instead of his memory, Schroeder was convinced that he was lying. Or at least holding something back.

  “It was about then that the doors to the auditorium finally opened and we followed the rest of the shareholders inside,” Reinfeld said.

  * * *

  Reinfeld and McKenzie secured seats in the second to last row near the door, sitting side by side. The auditorium was well lit, although the stage was dark. After a few minutes, the auditorium lights dimmed and the stage lights came up just enough for the audience to see a podium off to the side and a huge screen in the back. The shareholders hushed themselves without being told to. A lone man wearing boots, jeans, and a plaid shirt stepped onto the stage and crossed over to the podium. Applause followed him, yet it seemed to be generated mostly from KTech’s marketing people.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Porter King, executive vice president responsible for marketing at KTech.”

  There was more applause, but he raised his hand to silence it.

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “Only none of you came here today to listen to me.”

  He turned and gazed at the giant screen which suddenly lit up to reveal a younger man also dressed in plaid. His face was clean-shaven and his blond hair neatly coiffed, yet his eyes had the dull sheen of a man who hadn’t slept for three days. The smile on his haggard face, however, was dazzling.

  “Hello, Charles,” Porter said.

  Loud, sustained applause followed; half of the shareholders were on their collective feet. Charles King seemed to drink it in like a man dying of thirst who suddenly stumbled upon an oasis.

  After a few minutes, Porter raised his hand again to quiet the crowd.

  “So what do you have to say for yourself, Charles?” he asked.

  “I look like hell,” Charles said. “I feel like hell. But I’m getting better.”

  The crowd erupted as if he had just told each shareholder that they were getting a free car and the keys were beneath their seats. Porter let it go a bit longer this time before he signaled for silence.

  “As you know, Charles, there has been some speculation as to your health,” he said.

  “Let’s put that to rest, shall we, Porter? My health sucks and has sucked for the past couple of weeks. At first, I thought it was the cupcakes my niece and her roommate had baked for me. I have since been assured by the world’s finest medical minds that what I have is a particularly virulent case of the flu. The real flu, not coronavirus. I was tested. I do not have COVID-19. What I do have is a fever that becomes the chills and then the fever beats me up again. My throat is sore, my nose is runny, my muscles ache, my head throbs, and I’m exhausted, mostly from running to the bathroom every twenty minutes. Which isn’t that big a deal when you think about it. I’ve been reliably informed that about eight percent of the population gets the flu every year. It was just my turn. The problem is that we live in a particularly media-conscious world, both social and otherwise
. Whenever anything unexpected happens, the conspiracy theorists at TMZ and The New York Times go nuts. If you believe what you read on Twitter, I died a week ago. Or was it yesterday? ’Course, I’m just as much to blame for this as anyone. The SEC was right. I tweet way too much.”

  There was some snickering at that.

  “Honestly,” Charles said. “If I had known the state of my health was going to cause so much concern, I would have shown up at the annual meeting last week and infected you all.”

  Charles leaned toward the camera and coughed twice.

  “Sometimes I wish I had,” he said. “I hate suffering alone.”

  “I, for one, am glad you didn’t,” Porter said.

  “I’m sorry for causing you all so much concern. On the other hand, having so many people freaking out because I can’t keep my lunch down is kind of cool. It makes me feel important.”

  “You are important,” Porter said.

  “Not that important. Let’s address the elephant that wandered into the room when my temperature reached a hundred and one degrees, shall we? KTech isn’t just me, although it’s my face you see whenever you turn on Bloomberg or CNBC. We have a lot of outstanding operating managers working for this great company; you heard from a couple of them last week during my absence. People who are one hundred percent prepared to assume responsibility for KTech’s future in case of our departure, either by natural causes or the SEC.”

  There was a smattering of laughter that followed Charles’s joke, although not much.

  “It would be irresponsible to our company, to our employees and business partners, and to all of you who have invested your hard-earned money in KTech not to have plans in place to replace our leadership. A plan of succession, if you will. I call it the AYFKM plan, as in Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Excuse my language.”

  The way the audience laughed and applauded, apparently they had.

  “Now understand, I don’t expect this plan to kick in until—how old is Warren Buffett? Ninety? How old is Charles Munger? Ninety-six? So, please, while I appreciate the outpouring of concern, we got this.”