Never Enough

by Harold Robbins

  Later in the week P&G announced that it had acquired Whipple, Incorporated, a leading manufacturer of shortenings and cooking oils with an impressive set of brand names and trademarks. Whipple was a family-held company, the brothers were ready to retire and enjoy being multimillionaires for the rest of their lives, and so sold for a price most favorable to Procter & Gamble. P&G announced it would retire a few of Whipple’s less profitable products and expand the manufacture of others.

  On this news, the price of P&G stock rose eighteen percent. Dave held it only a few days, then ordered Windsor Nassau to sell it. His profit was not great, but it was worth his short-term risk.

  He rewarded Jack Silver with information from Harcourt.

  II

  APRIL

  “Dave, this is a harebrained scheme. It could very easily put an end to your career.”

  “And make half a million dollars—maybe more—if it works. Look, I’ve studied the risk. Very carefully. I don’t think I can do it alone, though. I need a partner. The guy is a man of routine. He never varies. I’ve been watching him for weeks.”

  “But you’ll have to do it more than once.”

  “Yes. I figure.”

  “And each time—”

  “No subsequent time is more dangerous than the first.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t know if I want to get into this, Dave.”

  “Well, you’re either in or you’re out.”

  “Let me have the details.”

  “Okay. Theodore T. Logan IV—sometimes called ‘Eye-Vee’—is with Drexel Burnham Lambert, in mergers and acquisitions. He hasn’t been touched by the scandals, yet. Now … He’s a man of sixty. People who do business with him are accustomed to getting calls from him at all hours of the evening—which means he carries documents home. He leaves Drexel Burnham precisely at six every evening and takes a cab downtown to the Broadway Athletic Club. You’re a member, and I’m a member. He undresses and stashes his clothes in his locker—also his briefcase. He goes in the steam bath for fifteen minutes, then goes in the pool and swims laps for an hour. He never varies that routine. I swim with him. We’ve gotten to be nodding acquaintances.”

  “Does he know what you do, who you’re with?”

  “I doubt it. Anyway, when members are not using their lockers, they leave them latched.”

  “Rule of the club,” said Jack. “So nobody could stash a bomb in a locker.”

  “Or cocaine or whatever. Anyway … I’ve experimented with the latch on my locker. With a plastic credit card you can open a locker in two seconds. Just stick it in the gap and push, and the latch surrenders. Those lockers were never meant to be very secure.”

  “So you lift his briefcase, and … ?”

  “We’ve got an hour and fifteen minutes. One briefcase looks pretty much like another, and I walk in earlier, carrying mine. I walk out carrying his. Nobody’s going to know the difference. You know the Wakefield Hotel a couple doors up the street. We’ll have a room there. I bring the briefcase to the room, and we look over what he’s got in there. We find out what the hell he’s doing. There’s a coin-operated copy machine in the hotel. No one notices what you copy. We can copy anything we want to.”

  “Then you take the briefcase back—”

  “No. You do. I can’t walk out of the club and come back in half an hour or so. You go to the locker room, watch your chance, open Eye-Vee’s locker, and return his briefcase. You undress and use my locker. I’ll give you my key. You go swimming for a while. Then you come back, open my locker with my key, dress, and take out my briefcase, that’ll be waiting there. You come in with a briefcase and come out with one. You come back to the hotel, where I’ll have been studying the papers we’ve copied.”

  “All very smooth if there’s not a hitch,” said Jack.

  “Simple as hell,” said Dave. “If there’s a hitch, improvise.”

  Dave came into the locker room from the pool, stripped off his Speedos, and took a shower. While he was in the shower, Theodore Logan came in, stripped and stashed his clothes and briefcase in his locker, and went out toward the steam room and pool.

  Dave hurried to his own locker and pulled the plastic card from his jacket pocket. He defeated the latch on Logan’s locker but left the door closed while he dressed.

  Now a hitch did develop. Too many men passed in and out of the locker room. He needed a moment alone to open Logan’s locker. He grew nervous with the delay.

  Until he realized that none of these men knew what member had what locker. He opened Logan’s locker when no one was at an angle to see the clothes hanging inside, pulled out the briefcase, and left.

  In the hotel room he and Jack spread the papers over the bed and scanned them.

  “Hot damn!”

  “I can’t believe it. Mead wants to acquire Boise Cascade!”

  “Makes sense,” said Jack. “Mead’s a paper company. BC’s a forest products and paper company. Mead diversified wildly in the past twenty years, acquiring companies involved in industries its management doesn’t really know—”

  “Like computers,” said Dave. “LEXIS/NEXIS.”

  “Well, that’s damned successful. They plowed a lot of money into it, but it works. We’ve got the system at the bank. I’ll bet you’ve got it at Harcourt.”

  “I haven’t used it, but I understand some people rely on it.”

  “You’d never believe the kinds of things you can find out. It’s gotta be one of the world’s largest databases.”

  “Do we really need to copy any of this?” Dave asked.

  Jack shook his head. “We can see what Eye-Vee’s into. Mead’s going to want to get a bank to underwrite a bond issue to finance its bid. It’s not going to be Stuyvesant.”

  “It’s not going to be Harcourt.”

  “Let’s get these papers back into the order they were in when we took them out, and you can go to the club and return the briefcase.”

  “We’ve got to keep on this,” said Jack. “When Mead has the underwriting, they’ll move. We’ve got to pull this stunt every day.”

  Jack went to the club, returned Logan’s briefcase to his locker with no trouble, and took a swim.

  They went through the same routine the next day, without a snag. On that day they copied half a dozen pages. The details of the Mead deal were beginning to fall into shape. And the next day. After that they varied the routine—some days Jack went in first and lifted the briefcase, and Dave returned it. Using the hotel copier, they accumulated their own file on the coming tender offer for Boise Cascade.

  On the eleventh day they learned that Citicorp would underwrite Mead.

  Dave hurried to the club with the briefcase. When he arrived he found the locker room too crowded to allow him to replace the briefcase in Logan’s locker. He stashed it in his own locker and covered his presence by taking a swim. When he returned to the locker room there were still a couple of men there. So he took a shower. When he came out the room was vacant, so he pulled Logan’s briefcase immediately from his locker and moved toward Logan’s locker.

  At that moment in walked Theodore T. Logan IV.

  Dave all but panicked. Others might not distinguish Logan’s briefcase from his own, but Logan would take one glance at it and recognize it as his.

  One human foible saved the moment. Logan did not pay any attention to the briefcase, even to wondering what a naked man was doing with a briefcase. As almost any man or woman would, he stared at Dave’s penis. He nodded a half-friendly greeting, then turned and walked into the shower. Shaking, Dave quickly opened Logan’s locker and shoved the briefcase inside.

  He didn’t tell Jack of the close call.

  “Well, it all fits into place,” said Jack. “Mead is going to make a tender offer for Boise Cascade. Which is going to drive Boise Cascade stock up. God, what an opportunity!”

  Dave frowned. “Yeah … well. The problem is, I’ve only got a hundred thousand I can put in it. I’m not going to come out so great
.”

  “Okay. Okay, man, you’ve put me onto something great. I’m going to buy half a million dollars’ worth. When I unload, the gain on a hundred thousand is yours.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Jack. I … I assume you’ve got a way of covering yourself.”

  “And I assume you do, too.”

  Dave nodded. “Offshore.”

  “I went direct to Geneva myself. How do you communicate with your … well, your foreign corporation and your bank?”

  “Phone booths, feeding quarters.”

  “Look. Go to the phone company. Surely you’ve got a credit card that doesn’t have your real name and address on it.”

  Dave smiled. “I’m thinking about getting a fake passport.”

  Jack shook his head emphatically. “Too risky. What address do you use on your fake credit card?”

  “Alexandra’s.”

  “And the line rings into … ?”

  “Her apartment.”

  “Buy a fax machine. You can send out your orders in writing. Confirmation will come back in writing. You can still be cryptic. I guess you trust this woman?”

  “We’re going to be married.”

  “Not the same as trusting her.”

  “I trust her. God, man, a guy’s got to trust somebody. I trust you.”

  “And I trust you, too. We’ve taken a hell of a risk and have set up something that’s going to make a lot of money for us. Be careful that your offshore company doesn’t buy too much Boise Cascade. I’ll spread my investment. If it doesn’t look like any single investor made a windfall, we’ll be all right. Otherwise, the SEC will be looking into the deal.”

  III

  “Please marry me,” Dave said to Alexandra. He handed her an engagement ring, simple, with one huge stone.

  They sat in the living room of her apartment, under the posters of the Ballets Russes.

  For the first time since he had met her, Alexandra showed tears. She nodded and let him slip the ring on her finger. They kissed.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you. Usually I don’t do reckless things, and this is reckless.” She threw her head back and laughed. “Otherwise, we die of boredom. And I think that’s one thing I will never experience with you, Dave Shea.”

  “I won’t be boring, Alexandra.”

  They went to bed and lingered there for a long time, then went out to dinner. This time, to celebrate their engagement, they went to the Russian Tea Room, late, after the tourists had left. They drank Stolichnaya, so cold that it was all but frozen and was thick, sipped with caviar. They followed this with Borscht Ukraïnsky, Ukrainian-style beet soup. Alexandra introduced Dave to blini—raised buckwheat pancakes with caviar. Their main course was nothing more complicated than beef Stroganoff, with deepred wine.

  Dave waited until they returned to her apartment before he raised with her a subject that was important to him but troubled him. “How do you think Bob Leeman would react to a contact from me?”

  “He understands why you broke off with him. He doesn’t hate you.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  IV

  Confident that no one from Harcourt Barnham would see him there, Dave arranged to meet Bob Leeman at Al Cibelli’s Restaurant in Perth Amboy. Even there he asked for an obscure booth in the rear. When Leeman arrived, he had a martini in front of him. Leeman stared at that scornfully and ordered a glass of white wine.

  “Y’ meet your girlfriends here?” Leeman asked sarcastically. “And get drunk?”

  “I’ve got a big deal to share with you, Bob,” said Dave. “Neither one of us can take any chances on our being seen together.”

  “Share … ? Why me?”

  “Two reasons. I figure I owe you. More important, you’re a guy who knows how to cover a deal so nobody is going to find out.”

  “What you been up to?”

  “Don’t ask me how I know, but there’s going to be a big tender offer. When it hits, a certain stock is going to go up significantly.”

  “Insider information,” said Leeman. His faced flushed: a sign he had just heard something intriguing.

  “From the very best possible source.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Don’t ask. The guy I got it from doesn’t know he let it loose. Let’s put it this way: he was careless with his documents.”

  “You stole his papers?”

  “Borrowed them. He never knew they’d been touched.”

  “So, when you gonna tell me what stock?”

  “When you and I’ve, got a deal. When this tender offer comes out and the stock goes up, you can bet the SEC’s going to look hard at who bought how much in the preceding two or three weeks. You’ve got guys who buy and sell for you, in shell accounts that are really yours. I watched you work that way. These guys invest your money and take a percentage. You can invest a big piece of money—and spread it out so no single purchase is going to arouse suspicion.”

  “Two reasons,” said Leeman. “I see a third one. You want a piece of my action.”

  Dave nodded. “Thirty-five percent.”

  “How much you think I’m going to put into this?”

  “You’ll tell me after I tell you the deal.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  They paused while a waiter took their orders: Dave’s for a rare steak, Leeman’s for a Caesar salad.

  Before he heard the answer, Leeman had another question. “How you gonna explain on your 1040 how you came into this money?”

  Dave grinned. “Bob … for Christ’s sake! How do you report your income? I’ve got a friend with an account in Geneva, one with an account in Belize. I won’t ask where yours is. Don’t ask where mine is. We’ve got accounts. We’ve got shell corporations offshore. When you write a check to me, I want six or seven checks written to Joseph Windsor.”

  “Certified?”

  “No, for God’s sake! I trust you. You’re going to trust me.”

  “You’ve moved into the big time, Dave. I guess I never figured you wouldn’t. Hell … ten years from now you’ll be able to buy me and sell me out of pocket change.”

  “You work things right, I’ll keep you in pocket change. Now, let’s get something straight. There is no way anybody can trace this back to me. Absolutely. The way I got the information, nobody can trace it to me. No way! Your role is to make sure I can stash the money with no suspicion it went to me.”

  “My role is to make sure nobody can trace it to me, either,” said Leeman.

  “I’ll tell you the deal. You tell me how much you want to put in. Within ten days Mead Corporation is going to make a tender offer for Boise Cascade—”

  “Jesus! You’re not dealing with itty-bitty corporations.”

  “What’ll you put in it, ol’ buddy? Don’t forget, you can’t lose. That stock is surely not going to go down.”

  “A mill.”

  “Don’t be chintzy. Chances like this don’t come in every day.”

  “Two … It’ll hurt if’it don’t work.”

  “It’ll hurt if you don’t try. Make it three. If the tender offer is not made, you’ll have a three-million-dollar position in a sound company.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to give you another level of insurance. I want to make one more foray into my friend’s papers. After all, I’m putting in more of my own funds than I can afford. So, within the week you will get a call from ‘Mr. Kimble.’ Kimble will say, ‘You won’t believe this, but Larry has proposed to Elena’—or like that. That means the deal is on. If I say, ‘Elena has said no to Larry,’ that means the deal is off. If it’s on, go for it! Now, don’t hang in too long. You know how to judge that. Sell when it peaks.”

  V

  Dave looked into Logan’s briefcase one more time. He didn’t have to take it. He just scanned the documents and put it back.

  He put through a call to Bob Leeman—“Larry has proposed to Elena.”

  With his own $
100,000, Jack’s $100,000, and his $1,050,000 share of Leeman’s commitment, he had $1,250,000 in the deal. Boise Cascade rose thirty-one percent on news of the tender offer. He made $387,500, to be deposited in Pictet & Compagnie in the Bahamas.

  The chief winner was Leeman, who made more than $600,000. Dave didn’t ask how much more Jack put in and so didn’t know his profit.

  Dave married Alexandra Petrovna Krylov—still her official name, never changed. They decided they would live for a short time in her apartment. He already had a telephone line there, and a fax machine—under an assumed name—and he moved in a few other things. They would be comfortable until they found the place they wanted. They didn’t want to leave on a wedding trip immediately, so settled down into a comfortable domesticity for about two weeks.

  He already knew she was a vigorous and exciting lover. She loved sex and wanted a lot of it, but she frowned and said she would think about it when he suggested something besides the straight thing. She satisfied him, and he satisfied her.

  One thing she did like to do was take his penis from his pants and hold it in her hands, kneading and stroking, while they shared their evening drinks or watched television. She would be in no hurry to bring him to ejaculation.

  One evening Jack Silver came to the apartment. As they sat and talked and drank, Alexandra began to rub Dave’s cock inside his pants—right in front of Jack, who stared. Dave’s pants were strained as he and Jack continued to talk business. Jack continued to stare.

  On June 10 they flew to the Bahamas for their wedding trip. He carried checks rolled up in his socks, and on their first day “Joseph Windsor” went to Pictet and deposited them. His balance there now approached half a million dollars.