I had already gotten the JRU proposal and its acceptance to my boys. They were appropriately outraged and worried for me but eager to listen to Jennifer and – somewhat less so – Lenny Benson. When they had finished Bryce began. ‘It’s inspired,’ he said. ‘It gives a whole new meaning to the prison term hostile takeover.’
‘Yeah. Now it doesn’t mean Attica,’ Tyler laughed.
‘You know, if what you’ve told us is reliable,’ Bryce said to Lenny, ‘I don’t think it would take much to leverage a buyout.’ He turned to his brother. ‘Don’t you know that schmuck Tarrington, CEO?’
‘Yeah. Went to Yale with him. Dumber than Dubya and a lot more greedy,’ Tyler said. ‘We could make him an offer. And I think our firm could throw seven or eight million behind this.’ He turned to me. ‘Things went well in Hong Kong despite that sucker Murdoch.’ The boys don’t curse in my presence, even though everyone else here cusses at the drop of a hatpin, much less a hat.
Jennifer opened her eyes wide. ‘You’d invest that much?’ she asked. She turned to Lenny. ‘Would that be enough?’ she asked.
‘Marginal,’ Lenny told her. ‘We’d get a large minority position but not necessarily control.’
Bryce looked a little crestfallen.
‘Sell my damn house and put my money into this,’ I directed them.
‘Sell your house?’ Tyler asked, as shocked as if I’d just yelled ‘motherfucker’ at the top of my lungs.
‘But you’ve always wanted to hold on to the house,’ Bryce said. ‘Always.’
‘Until now,’ I told him.
‘Do you know how much that “damn house” is worth?’ Tyler asked me. I replied to this question with a smile and a shrug.
‘In for a penny – in for a pound,’ I told them. It was the most liberating moment I had known in many years. I had clung to the idea of the house – my adult home and garden – for many years. In my head I redid the perennial beds, thought about painting the hallway a light yellow instead of its current blue, and sometimes looked at catalogues, thinking of what I could buy to make the house more comfortable, more attractive, more homey. The problem was it wasn’t my home and it never would be again. I realized I could play the same mental games without owning the place. And my life was here and its quality was far more important.
‘That may be as much as ten million dollars,’ Bryce said. ‘Real estate in Greenwich had skyrocketed,’ he reminded me. ‘And they’re not making any more waterfront land there.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said with a faraway look in my eye. ‘I can’t imagine why anyone would pay ten million dollars to live in such a monstrously huge house in such a miserably petty place as Greenwich.’ I laughed. ‘I don’t think it was the infidelity that made me shoot your father, I think it was that place.’ I stopped and thought about what I had just said. ‘We should’ve sold it years ago,’ I told the boys. ‘It’s not where you boys grew up. I have no good memories of the place.’ I was lost in the past when I suddenly brightened and turned to Jennifer. ‘What do you think you could get for your apartment, if you sold it?’ I asked.
Jennifer thought about it for a minute. ‘I imagine it’ll bring a little over four.’
‘Four thousand! Is that all?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘No, Maggie – I meant four hundred thousand. Maybe even five.’
‘But I thought it was a loft.’
‘It’s a very big one bedroom,’ she smiled, ‘but I wasn’t up to the million-dollar level. But now the market is such that you get four million for real lofts – whole floors – in old factory buildings.’
I shook my head and had to laugh. ‘Well, I guess if someone is willing to pay ten to live in Greenwich they’d be willing to pay four to live in a factory.’ I stopped laughing, turned quite serious, and looked around. ‘You know, if we actually do end up owning this place,’ I said, ‘perhaps we should turn it into condominiums.’ I stopped again and waited until they all realized I was joking and laughed.
‘Hey, if we’re going to put out that much, let’s really do something with JRU once we own it,’ Tyler said.
‘Well, of course we will,’ I told them. ‘Isn’t that the point? We’ll make this a far better facility. We’ll actually train and rehabilitate those who are willing and capable.’
‘That wasn’t exactly what I was talking about, Mom,’ Tyler said. ‘I meant make some money with it.’
‘Are you certain you should risk everything you own on this scheme?’ I asked Jennifer.
‘You are,’ Jennifer countered. ‘Anyway, I might not have to sell it, yet.’
That was true. ‘But I’ll never leave here, Jennifer. You, on the other hand, will need a place to go to. I’m never going back to that house anyway,’ I said. ‘And if selling it can make life in here a little bit better – not only for myself but for everyone else – well, I really have nothing to lose, except the money.’
‘We’ll call it the Jennings Estate for the Criminally Rich,’ Tyler said.
‘Yeah. Milken, Boesky, Trump, maybe Leona Helmsley,’ Bryce said.
‘Great. The campaign can be, “You don’t have to be a felon to live like one.”’ Jennifer smiled.
‘It would definitely be a gated community,’ Lenny contributed, totally straight-faced.
‘One of the biggest concerns I have is how I am supposed to communicate with you. I mean, it’s not as if you’re my lawyers and can show up every day,’ Jennifer inquired. ‘And they monitor the telephone calls from the pay phones.’
‘We can set you up with a Palm Pilot with a communications option. Get you the newest and smallest laptop or perhaps a cell phone that can be linked to the Internet. But then our problem is getting them to you,’ Bryce said.
‘None of this is without risk,’ Jennifer told them. ‘But it can be done, can’t it, Maggie?’
‘Sure, if we’re careful. We’ll ask Movita. She’ll figure out a way and we’ll let you know what to do,’ I told my boys.
I was worried not for my sons’ investment firm, but for Jennifer Spencer. I saw the look in Bryce’s eyes as Jennifer and that accountant shared their plot of prison takeover and reform. Bryce was a dreamer – a trait that he had inherited from his father. But Bryce was a ruthless and manipulative dreamer – traits that had gotten his father a bullet between the eyes. I hoped that I wasn’t watching anything starting here, and that Jennifer Spencer would not someday want to murder my son, but it seemed to me that the chemistry between them as they concocted this scheme in the hour of a prison visitation could lead to nothing but trouble.
During my time in the prison library, I had listened to some pretty bizarre plans as inmates desperately tried to research new ways to beat the system. For myself, I harbored no hopes of beating the system. I had stopped the boys from their constant attempts at appeals, throwing good money after bad. I was in prison for life, and, as the old adage put it, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em – join ‘em.’ Experience had taught me that ‘joining ‘em’ was a whole lot better than ‘killing ‘em’.
As Jennifer Spencer and ‘Son Number Two’ enthusiastically spun their web of intrigue and revenge, I couldn’t help but wonder how different my life might have been had I been born into this new generation. Up until now, it had never occurred to me that instead of ‘join ‘em’ or ‘kill ‘em’, ‘buy ‘em’ might actually be a delightful way to beat your enemies at their own game. Seeing the glint in Jennifer Spencer’s eyes made me feel young again.
32
Jennifer Spencer
The narrower the cage, the sweeter the liberty.
German proverb
On the nights when Byrd wasn’t on duty after lights-out Movita would work her charms on the officer filling in so that Jen and Movita could meet Theresa and hunker down in her house to go online with the slim, sexy laptop. Jen would hand over the memos, letters, and emails she had drafted during the day in the library, and Movita, who could type over a hundred words a minute, would get online and knock the
m out.
Bryce and Tyler did most of the negotiating with Tarrington for his share of the JRU stock and its options. In the meantime, Lenny Benson set up not one, but two significant loans for the financially strapped firm, but made sure that the small print gave the lenders not just veto power over financial decisions but also the ability to vote for board members. Bryce and Tyler became board members the moment the loans were delivered.
Both processes were fast and fairly simple; after all, Jen explained to Movita, it didn’t take much to get people to accept an offer of free money. The next bit would be trickier. Normally they would not have needed a majority of shares to own a controlling interest in the company, but in this case more than forty percent of the issued stock belonged to Tarrington, who would take any questioning of his power badly. ‘We don’t want to have to buy all sixty-two percent of the remaining friggin’ stock. And by the way, you’ve got great eyes.’ Bryce emailed her. Movita read the message too and just gave her a look. ‘We’ve named ourselves to the board, and with what Benson and you can manage to dig up we can probably unseat Tarrington, but that doesn’t mean we want to spend more money than we have to control this fucker. Any thoughts?’
‘What the hell are they talking about?’ Movita asked.
‘It’s simple,’ Jen told her. ‘You can sometimes control a very big company with a fairly small percentage of their stock if you can get other large stockholders to vote with you. If you know the holdings are really widely dispersed among a lot of small stockholders, then unless Tarrington can get ‘em all to vote with him, you can also get control.’
‘Okay. I got that,’ Movita nodded. They were crouched in the corner beside the commode, over which Theresa had placed a cloth and a puzzle box so they could use it as a workstation. Tonight they were lucky because Officer Mowbry was patrolling the unit until midnight and she was too big and lazy to walk much. But even so, once in a while she walked past the cell and then Theresa signaled them. They had to be prepared to get into her bunk while Jen plastered herself under Theresa’s bunk as close up against the wall as possible. They crawled back together and Movita asked what else could be done.
‘Well,’ Jen explained, ‘the only other option I know of is buying more of the privately held shares. Or setting the place on fire.’
‘What would that do?’ Theresa asked. ‘Get insurance money?’
‘I was only joking,’ Jen whispered. ‘I was trying to dramatize how important it was to get controlling interest of the stock. I could still sell my condo,’ she murmured. ‘Lenny tells me it would raise about half a million dollars after I paid off the broker and the mortgage.’
‘Girl, ya’ got a half a million dollar crib?’
Jen tried not to smile. In Tribeca a half a million dollars bought a one-bedroom apartment, but there was a limit to the economic lessons she was going to teach tonight.
‘You gotta keep your home,’ Theresa said firmly. ‘You’re young and you’re not going to be here forever.’
‘There has to be some other way,’ Movita said.
‘There sure does,’ Jen sighed. ‘Because half a million dollars wouldn’t do much to get us controlling interest.’
Movita shook her head. ‘Those JRU men aren’t just mean bastards,’ she said. ‘They’re rich mean bastards.’
‘Honey,’ Jen told her. ‘Now you’re startin’ to understand Wall Street.’ She answered Bryce’s email, resisted flirting with him electronically, and sent another message to Lenny. By then it was almost midnight and Officer Mowbry was going off shift. Jennifer slipped off to her own cell.
It was the next morning that Jennifer came up with the plan. She was so excited that she had to tell Maggie. That wasn’t enough, though. She took the chance and punched in Warden Harding’s phone number into the cell phone. She was lucky that Movita and not Miss Ringling answered the phone. ‘I got it, girl,’ Jen told Movita.
‘I knew ya’ would,’ Mo said calmly, but Jen knew her well enough now to read the pleasure in her voice. ‘The Warden is in a meeting right now. Can I take a message?’
‘We’re going to take them public.’
‘And that would mean …’ Movita said.
‘We offer Tarrington and the rest of his crew a minority position in a company that gets publicly traded.’
‘And that would mean?’ Movita said again.
‘We tempt them with the idea of getting paid out when we raise a lot of money for them to take them public. They’ll have a smaller percentage of the total stock but the stock will be traded on Wall Street and because their holdings are publicly traded they can cash out whenever they want to,’ Jennifer explained.
‘And that would benefit the situation because …’ Movita inquired.
‘Because then we’d control them!’ Jen said, and she actually giggled.
‘You white girls got a strange sense of humor,’ Movita said, her voice lowered, and then she chuckled. ‘I’ll tell the Warden, as soon as she’s out of her meetin’.’
Jen hung up and went over the whole plan again with Maggie, then phoned Lenny and presented it to him. ‘Do you think you can you put together halfway decent financials for an IPO?’ she asked him.
‘Sure,’ he told her. ‘As long as you save a bunk for me in your cell.’
Jen smiled. ‘I think for that you go to Allenwood,’ she told him.
‘Yeah, I hear it’s a real country club,’ he cracked. That made her laugh out loud and Maggie raised her eyebrows and looked over at her. They had to be as circumspect as possible because the door to the library had to be kept open and an officer was always merely steps away.
Jen had to make all of her calls from the corner of the library by the window to keep the static down. The cell phone got the best signal there but it meant that she could be seen from the doorway and Maggie had to spend her time watching out for the authorities. Worse yet, now Jen was working on the laptop – running spreadsheets and projections based on a set of givens that were so far from given that they were more like fairy tales. But she had to start somewhere. Working on the laptop was even more dangerous than using the cell phone and when she used it Maggie actually had to stand in the doorway, her arms crossed, pretending to be doing something while she kept an eye out for an officer. ‘It’s my punishment,’ she had said. ‘For being the authority in so many classrooms for so many years. Now I’m chickie. Do they still call the lookout that?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jen admitted.
Maggie sighed. ‘I think it would have been more fun to spend my life misbehaving.’
Keeping her back to the door and being far enough back from the library window so she couldn’t be seen from the yard, Jen worked on convincing Lenny. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we don’t have to promise them anything financially in the IPO. We break it out, separate from the other JRU holdings. Prisons right now are a glamor stock. It’s a growth industry in an uncertain economy.’
‘Well, there’s a stunning indictment of the American Way if I ever heard one,’ Lenny told her.
She looked down at the spreadsheet she was running. ‘The point is, we’ll get buyers. Then Tarrington and his boys will get some money to further dilute their holdings, and for our services we retain the lion’s share.’
‘The lion’s share, Jennifer, means everything,’ Lenny told her. ‘Most people get that wrong and they think it means the majority. But the lion takes all.’
‘Well, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, either,’ Jen said. She paused. ‘Please, Lenny. Do you think that you can do it?’
‘Maybe,’ he admitted.
‘Can you get an accounting firm to rubber-stamp it?’
‘You know the answer to that.’
Simultaneously they said, ‘For the right price.’
‘Do you want me to try to get HVS to underwrite it?’ Lenny asked.
Jennifer thought about how poorly he was regarded at HVS as a rainmaker. She doubted they’d pick up any deal Lenny Benson brought
in. Plus, she didn’t want any of those sons-of-bitches to have any idea what she was doing. ‘Nah,’ she told him. ‘I think we can do better. You think the Rafferty boys would place it?’
‘Those pirates? They’d mutiny if you brought in anyone else. Anyway, if we actually do take JRU public we’ll want to use every greedy bastard there when the IPO’s floated to buy the thing and hype it.’
‘The point is, Lenny, could you use Hudson, Van Schaank cards, stationery, and letterhead now to make them think that HVS is interested? Then we can switch later once they’ve taken the bait.’
‘Ah, the old bait and switch,’ Lenny said.
You have lovely eyes. The phrase from Bryce’s email – for no reason she could think of – came into her head again. She put it out. ‘Well, we’ve got the HVS bait,’ she said.
‘It won’t just be bait, Jennifer, it’ll be money.’
‘Yeah, but it won’t have to be so much. Not if they think there’s a shot of a public offering. They’ll dilute themselves. Then, once we are in an ownership position …’
‘Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade but I’m just pointing out they may not want to dilute their stock if they think there’s going to be a public offering. It depends on how greedy they are.’
She paused. He was smart and he was right. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Then we make it a two-step waltz. First we give them some money infusion for some stock. Not just the loans. Then we tempt them with a possible offering or an acquisition and dilute them further.’
Before she could hear his response, Maggie hissed at her. ‘Byrd,’ she said, and Jennifer hung up, just like that, stashed the phone behind the books on the self-help shelf (after all, they were helping themselves), closed the iBook and crossed the room to the pile of books waiting to be put back alphabetically. It was a good thing, Jennifer thought, that in all her years in prison Maggie had never been caught with contraband.
Movita handed the kite to Jen at dinner. She opened it and read it. ‘Could you join me this evening in my cell. Maggie.’ Jen looked over at Movita, who nodded and Jen nodded back.
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