The Takeover

by Stephen W. Frey

  24

  Peter Lane tried to calm his nerves as he lay beneath the palm trees of the deserted St. Croix beach. But he hadn’t been able to completely relax since Veens & Company had announced its takeover offer for Penn-Mar only a few days after he had convinced Farinholt to put twenty thousand dollars of the President’s money into the chemical company. He had been looking over his shoulder ever since. St. Croix was his third island hideout in the last two weeks.

  He gazed at the huge palm tree swaying rhythmically above him in the midafternoon breeze. He should never have listened to that woman who had so smoothly approached him in Georgetown’s River Club that Friday evening. But she had been so beautiful. He had been unable to resist her offer to buy him a drink or her offer of money. He had desperately needed that money, especially the amount she was talking about. And her request had seemed so simple.

  After running from Victor Farinholt’s office, Lane had driven straight from Washington to the Philadelphia airport. He hadn’t bothered to return to his sparsely furnished apartment in Southeast because it would have been too risky. Within ten minutes, Farinholt would have realized that he wasn’t coming back with the research data. Farinholt would have erupted into a rage and sent someone to Lane’s home. Fortunately, he had been prepared for such an emergency. The suitcase had been packed and stowed in the BMW’s trunk for weeks.

  He had driven all the way to Philadelphia for two reasons. First, National, Dulles, or BWI would have been too obvious. After posting a man at his apartment, Farinholt would have sent people to the Washington airports, and probably Amtrak’s Union Station as well, to stop him. Second, Lane knew that there was a direct flight from Philadelphia to St. Thomas every day at four in the afternoon. It was his flight to freedom.

  Farinholt didn’t really have anything on him, not yet anyway. But Lane knew that Farinholt would have tried to stop him any way he could, because somehow the old man had sensed that something was amiss. Farinholt wouldn’t have been able to detain him legally, but the old man’s friends could be very convincing. Or so he had heard.

  The worst part about the situation was that Lane didn’t know why the people from whom he had taken the five hundred thousand dollars wanted him to put Lodestar into Penn-Mar. Perhaps the loan sharks had somehow learned of the takeover and concocted the scheme to destroy him. But that seemed highly unlikely because it didn’t achieve their ultimate goal—recouping their money. More plausible was the possibility that Farinholt had an enemy who saw an opportunity to settle an old score. And Lane was the pawn. But why had the woman specified that it should be the President’s money that went into Penn-Mar? And how would the enemy have known of the takeover?

  He hadn’t known much at that point. But standing outside Farinholt’s office he had known two things for certain. One, there was almost four hundred thousand dollars sitting in the Caymans waiting for him. And two, he wanted to stay a free man. That freedom would have been seriously endangered if he had stuck around Washington too much longer and become embroiled in some sort of scandal. Or worse, taken a long ride with Farinholt’s friends before the scandal ever got started.

  Lane had moved the money eight times since fleeing from Washington. It cost him three thousand dollars in total to do it, but it was worth every penny. The money had to be clean by now. Still, he had less than four hundred thousand dollars already. If he lived like a pauper, that amount might buy him ten years of anonymity. Could he have been more stupid?

  Lane stared up at the large leaves. They seemed somehow to resemble elephant ears as they moved in the soft breeze. Back and forth, back and forth. God, he was tired. He listened to the aqua blue water rolling constantly into the beach against the white sand, hissing benignly as it receded to the sea. He allowed his eyes to close momentarily, then snapped back to consciousness. He could not allow himself to fall asleep. There was no telling who might be trying to find him.

  Lane propped himself up on one elbow and gazed out over the lonely beach. He squinted against the brightness of the sun’s rays. There was nothing in sight except for a catamaran sailing far offshore. Lane squinted harder, trying to focus on the craft. There appeared to be only one person aboard, but he could make out no details with the boat so far away. He lay back on the sand. He had to stay awake. It was too dangerous to fall asleep.

  * * *

  —

  Phoenix Grey moved stealthily through the palm trees until he reached a point directly behind the sleeping Peter Lane. Grey glanced back to see if he could see the catamaran pulled up on the shore several hundred feet up the beach. Good. It was out of sight.

  Grey had been following Lane since flying from the Dominican Republic to Antigua, where he picked up the man’s trail. Now it was time to act.

  There was no danger that Lane would awaken—the man hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours—but Grey worked quickly and purposefully anyway. He bent down next to Lane and delivered a quick chop to the side of the man’s neck. It paralyzed Lane but did not kill him, just as Phoenix wanted.

  Lane’s eyes flew open immediately. He began to scream at the pain surging through his body. Unceremoniously, Grey inserted a large, spongy rubber ball into Lane’s mouth. The brute strength with which he accomplished the maneuver dislocated Lane’s jaw, causing him even greater pain, but Grey had no sympathy. The ball effectively muffled Lane’s cries and would not leave residue in the throat and lungs as a cloth gag would. There probably would be nothing left of either the throat or lungs when it was over, but you could never be too careful. It had to look natural.

  Phoenix removed latex gloves from a dark blue waterproof backpack he had carried with him from the catamaran. He donned the gloves, then removed a clear plastic bag from which he painstakingly extracted several pieces of paper. He first moved to Lane’s right hand, carefully pressing the limp fingertips against the paper in many places, and then to the left hand, repeating the procedure. When he had finished with the left hand, Grey replaced the papers into the plastic bag, sealed the bag shut, and placed it into the backpack. He removed the latex gloves from his hands, stuffed them into the backpack, and zipped the backpack closed.

  Lane moved his head from side to side because it was all he could do. The pain was unbearable.

  Grey stood and gazed down at Peter Lane. “I thought you would have passed out by now, you dumb bastard.” He curled his lip and kicked the paralyzed man in the side of the head. The kick had no purpose except to deliver pain.

  Grey glanced up and down the beach. There was no sign of anyone. He slung the backpack on his shoulder and then stooped over to pick up Lane. “Come on, old man.” With ease he flipped Lane over the same shoulder that supported the backpack.

  Within minutes the catamaran was heading back out into the ocean. Peter Lane lay sprawled across the tarpaulin deck of the craft, barely conscious. Grey searched the waves for the chum slick, and what he saw made him smile. Shark fins. Lots of them. The sea vultures had taken less time than he had anticipated to gather in the mess of fish blood and guts he had meted out during the last hour. He sailed into the middle of the feeding frenzy and allowed the large sail to go slack.

  With precision Grey made several deep incisions in Lane’s arms and legs to entice the sharks, incisions that could still be mistaken for bites were the coroner’s office to perform its work too diligently. There was no reason to believe the coroner would be that diligent. After all, this was St. Croix. But he had to be careful anyway. Blood pulsed from the incisions.

  Phoenix moved up the tarp to Lane’s head and pried the rubber ball from the man’s mouth with an ice pick. Lane could no longer even move his head. He simply stared at Grey sadly.

  “Over you go!” With one great push Phoenix Grey dumped Lane’s body into the sea. The sharks moved to the man immediately as he floated faceup on the surface. Grey had been careful to dump Lane overboard so that he would float faceup, aware that it might take the
sharks some time to become bold enough to begin ripping his body apart. And he did not want the coroner to determine that Lane’s death had been a result of drowning, just in case the sharks did not shred him too badly.

  But there was no reason to worry. The sharks butted Lane’s body with their snouts several times, and then the gaping mouth of a large blue closed over Lane’s head and began shaking it violently. Others quickly joined in the attack, and Lane’s body was ripped to pieces in a matter of minutes. Grey scanned the water. Nothing remained on the surface but a bloody hand with just two fingers still attached.

  25

  Sparks Steak House was a man’s place if there ever was one. From the obligatory premeal drinks at the stained wood bar and the all-male Sicilian staff, to the checkerboard tablecloths and the mammoth, bloody portions of beef, it screamed machismo. Sports celebrities frequented the establishment—their autographed pictures adorned the walls. The three-martini lunch guild came here to impress only their heartiest business clients. And the Cosa Nostra, the toughest of any secret New York fraternity, regularly accounted for half of the occupied tables. A godfather had died on the front steps, his belly full of Sparks steak and an assassin’s bullets.

  It was one of Falcon’s favorite places in the world. The food was incomparable, the wine list long and delectable, and the maître d’ an old friend.

  He was purposely thirty minutes late, and as he moved through the foyer, the bright sunshine faded to a comforting darkness. He could not restrain a slight smile as he considered what Cassandra Stone had endured in the last half hour.

  Cabrelli, the dictatorlike maître d’, met Falcon at the door. They shook hands firmly, and a ten-dollar bill passed subtly from one hand to the other. Cabrelli then stepped back and jerked his head to the right, in the direction of the bar. A strange expression clouded his face, but Falcon disregarded it.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Andrew, my boy,” he said in a deep, guttural tone.

  “Thanks, Pauly.” Falcon smiled at the older man, recalling the many closing dinners he had hosted at this restaurant to celebrate the execution of wildly profitable transactions for Winthrop, Hawkins. Those had been the days. Now it seemed they were back. Better than before.

  Falcon turned toward the bar, expecting to see a helpless soul, one Cassandra Stone, who, after dealing with the loud and pushy male crowd at the bar for the last thirty minutes, would see him as a lighthouse beacon in the storm. His expectations were quickly shattered.

  Cassandra sat on a stool in the middle of the bar, smiling broadly as she concentrated on something in her hand. She was surrounded closely by four large men. That inner circle of four men was wrapped by a more loosely packed outer layer of individuals who were intently watching the inner circle and Cassandra. Both the audience and the inner group alternately cheered and groaned as they witnessed the proceedings and consumed their prelunch cocktail. The bartenders too were engrossed in whatever was going on. Falcon gazed for a moment at the scene but could discern nothing. He glanced back at Cabrelli, but Cabrelli only shrugged his shoulders.

  Falcon moved into the bar area, pushed his way through the audience, and then through the inner circle. “Cassandra!” He grabbed her forearm.

  “Andrew! How are you?”

  “Fine. What the heck are you doing?”

  “Just playing a little liar’s poker.” She gestured at the inner circle of men.

  By using the serial numbers of dollar bills—the eight green-colored numbers on the face of the bill, bounded at either end by a capital letter—players could create crude poker hands: a pair of sevens, three fours, et cetera. By including and guessing at the serial numbers of the other players’ bills, which were kept hidden from view, hands people claimed to have could become quite large, depending on the total number of people playing. Play moved clockwise until someone was “called.” The player who had been called then discreetly checked all of the other bills. If by aggregating the serial numbers on all of the bills, the player actually had the hand he claimed to possess—say, ten eights—then he took all of the players’ bills, and another hand began with fresh cash. If the player was short, he put his bill on the bar for the eventual winner, and play began again without him, with the same bills.

  Falcon glanced down and spotted a twenty-dollar bill in Cassandra’s hand. He noticed that the four men also held twenty-dollar bills. So she was a gambler. And she played for pretty high stakes, even in a casual game of liar’s poker. This woman would have to be monitored closely. “Come on.” He pulled her gently.

  “I’m in the middle of a hand.” But she did not resist Falcon and followed easily as he pulled, laughing as she slid from the barstool.

  A chorus of boos arose from the other players.

  “Sorry, fellas.” Cassandra waved as she moved away.

  “How much did you lose?” Falcon asked as he led her away from the bar, toward the restaurant.

  “I won three hundred dollars. I figured you’d make me wait, so I came prepared. You can always get a bunch of men interested in liar’s poker if you’re a woman. They assume you’re easy money. I went down early with ones and fives, as the ante to get them overconfident. After a few hands they were hooked. Then we started playing for some serious money.”

  “You think that’s pretty good, don’t you?”

  Cassandra removed a wad of bills from her purse and waved it at him. “Yup.”

  He glanced at her and shook his head. “Serious gamblers play with and for their credit cards.”

  She tossed her head back and laughed. Wall Streeters. They always had another angle to one-up you.

  They reached the maître d’ podium.

  “Andrew, you’re not gonna have a drink before lunch?” Cabrelli seemed concerned.

  “No, Pauly, I think we’ll just sit down.”

  “Okay. This way.” Cabrelli moved into the maze of tables. “Hey, Andrew, I thought you said I might need to take care of her when you called this morning,” he said over his shoulder.

  Falcon attempted to cough loudly to drown out Cabrelli’s words, but Cassandra heard the remark. Solemnly, she raised her eyebrows at Falcon as she sat in the seat Cabrelli held out for her.

  Cabrelli moved off to alert their waiter. Falcon turned toward Cassandra, ready to receive questions about the takeover he knew would come, or at least a rebuke for having intentionally left her at the bar for a half hour. But he received neither. Instead, he was treated to nothing but an enjoyable meal. For an hour they ate, drank, and talked about world events, sports, fashion, and places they had each visited. Falcon was impressed with her. Definitely impressed.

  “Cassandra, would you care for dessert?” The waiters had descended upon the table at Cabrelli’s signal and quickly cleared the remains of the main course. “They have a great tiramisu here.”

  Cassandra breathed deeply. “I couldn’t.” She looked up at the waiter. “Just some espresso, please.”

  “Make that two.”

  The waiter nodded at Falcon and was gone.

  “Okay, Andrew, now it’s time for you to earn your meal. There’s no free lunch at the Financial Chronicle.”

  Falcon leaned back in the padded chair. “Here we go. Now I get peppered.”

  Cassandra ignored the remark. “Tell me something about yourself. Something unrelated to the Penn-Mar takeover, or business, or even New York.”

  “Is this a technique you use to pry the pearl from the oyster?”

  “Of course, one of the most basic techniques. So go for it. Tell me something. A secret for instance.”

  Falcon grinned. “What?” He stared at her. She had kept pace with him, drinking the wine, glass for glass.

  “You strike me as someone who probably has a few secrets. Tell me one.”

  “You know, you make me laugh. That’s one thing I’ll say about you.” Falcon took the last sip
of wine from his glass. “Let’s say I had a few secrets, which I’m not saying I do. Why would I tell them to a newspaper reporter I just met?”

  “Because you trust me. You probably don’t have too many people you feel you can confide in, and you need one. I can tell. So you can confide in me. You’ll feel better when you do. I know it. Trust me,” Cassandra said matter-of-factly.

  “You win three hundred dollars in twenty minutes at a game called liar’s poker, plus you’re a newspaper reporter digging for a story, and I should trust you? I don’t think so. The only thing I should do is go to Atlantic City with you.”

  Cassandra smiled. “You’re right, you should. I do very well there.”

  “Let’s go the other way. You tell me something about yourself.”

  Falcon wasn’t going to be easy to crack. She could see that. “Fine. I was born in the Rose Hill Projects of downtown Atlanta thirty-four years ago. I went to Emory on a journalism scholarship. I started working at the Chronicle four years ago after seven years at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. My favorite sports team is the Los Angeles Raiders, although I liked them better when they were the Oakland Raiders. And I don’t invest in equities. I’m strictly a fixed-income investor. How about that?”

  Falcon’s eyes danced. This woman could cover all the topics. And she was as sharp as a tack. She ought to be an investment banker, he thought. “Are you married?”

  “I got married when I was young. It didn’t work.”

  “Divorced?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Children?”

  Cassandra turned toward the bar. “Yes. A boy.”

  “How old?”

  “He would be eighteen by now.”

  “I’m sorry.” Falcon’s eyes dropped to the tablecloth.

  “For what?”

  “I just assumed when you said ‘would,’ you meant he had died.”

  Cassandra hesitated. “No. I put him up for adoption.” She stared at him, trying to tell if he had become suddenly judgmental, as so many others did when they heard that little item. But there was none of that from Falcon.