by Stephen Frey
“Isn’t director the next title above vice president?”
“Director, yes. After that it’s managing director, then senior managing director.”
“Well, I’ve taken a look at your personnel record at Sumter, and it’s outstanding. You’ve generated a significant amount of business for the bank, and you’ve never been a discipline problem. Shouldn’t a woman with that kind of record have been promoted to director by now? My aides tell me that several of your peers who haven’t performed anywhere near as well as you have, including two women, are directors earning a good deal more income than you are.”
Angela shrugged, trying not to show emotion. That issue was a constant and bitter source of frustration.
“Did you know that human resources has put you up for that promotion twice?”
She glanced up.
“And,” Lawrence continued, “your boss has stonewalled the process both times.”
Angela stared at Lawrence, trying not to show emotion.
“Why do you think that is?” Lawrence asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied, her voice raspy. She’d always considered her boss, Ken Booker, a friend. He’d always blamed her not getting promoted on human resources. Now Lawrence was telling her it was the other way around.
“Could your background be a factor?” he asked directly.
“I suppose anything is possible.”
Lawrence hesitated, gently caressing her thigh. “But that explanation doesn’t seem entirely plausible. I mean, if you’re performing well, wouldn’t they be afraid to lose you to another bank?”
“They don’t seem to be.”
“Could your not getting the promotion have anything to do with the fact that senior executives at Sumter Bank perceive you as a troublemaker? Even though there’s nothing on your record to indicate that.”
Angela’s eyes flashed to Lawrence’s. “What are you talking about?”
“Any possibility that they suspect you are a certain newspaper reporter’s source of some very negative information regarding the bank’s poor record of service to minorities in its market areas? In the last few months theRichmond Tribune has turned up the heat on Sumter Bank about that poor record.” Lawrence hesitated. “There was one particularly damaging article written by a reporter named Olivia Jefferson that came out last week. That article led people to believe she might have a source inside Sumter.”
Angela said nothing.
“Do you know Ms. Jefferson?”
“I think I may know of her.”
“I’m not asking if you knowof her,” Lawrence said, his voice rising, “I’m asking if youknow her.”
“I, um, yes. I’ve met her at a couple of business functions. She covers local business for theTribune , and Richmond is a pretty small city.”
Lawrence’s eyes narrowed as he moved his hand higher on Angela’s thigh. “Those Wall Street investment bankers I mentioned do have one theory about the decline of Sumter’s stock price.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. As you probably know, the entire banking industry has been going through a massive consolidation over the past ten years. Small ones and big ones are gobbling each other up every day, making shareholders very wealthy in the process.”
“I do know that.”
“But what you may not know is that the Federal Reserve and other regulators closely monitor a bank’s performance with respect to serving low-income and minority communities. That they review those records before approving any merger or acquisition, and that these regulators can hold up profitable mergers if they aren’t satisfied with a bank’s record regarding the issue. My investment bankers believe that might be the case with Sumter. They believe that all of this bad press about Sumter in theRichmond Trib may have made it less attractive as an acquisition target to the big boys in New York, North Carolina, and on the West Coast because those entities fear that any bid they make would be held up by the regulators. My people think that the decline in Sumter’s stock price is directly related to that nasty information, which, by the way, other newspapers seem to be picking up on. My sources tell me theWall Street Journal is considering the possibility of conducting its own investigation into what’s going on at Sumter.”
Angela swallowed hard. In fact, she was intimately aware of how the government monitored the country’s largest banks in terms of how well they were serving low-income people. Perhaps she and Lawrence were getting to the real reason he had flown her all the way out here. He’d spent almost $500 million on Sumter stock. Now it was worth forty million less. If theWall Street Journal decided to investigate Sumter and found anything negative, his investment might be worthfar less.
“Are you getting my drift, Angela?” he asked, reaching up and stroking her hair.
She closed her eyes tightly, managing not to flinch. “I—”
“One more question.”
“Yes?”
“Who’s Sally Chambers?”
Angela pulled back with a start, as though she’d touched a live wire. “What?”
“Sally Chambers,” Lawrence repeated. “Who is she?”
Angela swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered.
“Answer me.”
“You have no right to—”
“I will help you, if you help me,” he interrupted. “But if you don’t, I won’t help you. And helping me includes answering each of my questions.”
Angela could feel herself shaking. Fear, anger, regret, and guilt were all coming together to form a hurricane of emotion. “Sally was my best friend.”
“Was?”
“You know what happened.” The awful image of blood pouring from Sally’s mouth and nose came flashing back, and she could feel herself losing control. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Sally died, didn’t she?”
“Yes. In my arms.”
“That’s awful,” Lawrence said softly. “You know, there’s so much we could do together, so many important problems we could solve. Yours and mine. I’d hate to see anything get in the way of those possibilities.” He smiled, then leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Angela Day,” he whispered, running his fingers up the inside of her leg to her belt. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
CHAPTER THREE
“So, how did it go?”
Angela was gazing at the snow-covered peaks in the distance as she swayed atop the stallion behind Tucker. She was thinking about that night on the fraternity house porch nine years ago. Lawrence had brought it all screaming back to her. “What?”
“Did he lay the Jake Lawrence charm on you?” Tucker wanted to know.
She could still feel Lawrence’s hot breath as he’d leaned forward to kiss her. Still remember that look in his dark, dead eyes. The touch of his fingers running up her inner thigh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Try to get you to have a little drink with him, then move in?”
She smelled whiskey on Tucker’s breath as he turned in the saddle. Hopefully, the flask was still relatively full. He seemed steady enough, and it wasn’t as if she had any other way of getting down the mountain. “I told you, John,” she said, “it was abusiness meeting.”
“Excuse me for living. I just know how Lawrence is.” Tucker pushed the brim of his hat back as they neared the point where the trail turned tricky. “He’s seduced other pretty young things in less time than it took him to get you into and out of that cabin.”
“I thought you told me last night you respected Mr. Lawrence’s desire to protect his privacy.”
“So?”
“So here you are talking about his sexual exploits with an outsider.”
“Ah, the hell with him,” Tucker grumbled after a long pause. “Maybe this is the whiskey talking, and maybe I’ll be sorry I said anything tomorrow, but Jake Lawrence can be a real prick.”
“What do you mean?”
“He makes a lot of promises, but he’
ll never be mistaken for a postman.”
“I don’t—”
“He doesn’t deliver,” Tucker said, clarifying.
“Oh.” Angela glanced down into the canyon to her left. “What kind of promises does he make?”
“Money, jobs, relationships. He does his research, finds the opportunity or the weakness, then makes the appropriate pledge.” Tucker laughed harshly. “I’ve heard it all on this trail. Young women can be amazingly naive.”
“How do you know he doesn’t deliver?”
“I have my ways.”
Angela hesitated. “Mr. Lawrence asked me to work on a project with him. I believe you can tell a great deal about how a person will conduct themselves in business by the way they lead their personal lives.”
“You aren’t going to like what you hear.”
“Explain what you—Oh, God!” She wrapped her arms around Tucker’s waist as the stallion slid unexpectedly on a patch of ice, then reared up on its hind legs. She pressed her face into Tucker’s jacket and shut her eyes tightly. “John!”
“Whoa!” Tucker called, making a soothing, clicking sound with his tongue and cheek. “Steady, boy!” The horse dropped its hooves back to the snow, then snorted loudly and sidled quickly to the left, within a few feet of the cliff. Immediately Tucker kicked hard with his left heel, pulled the right rein toward the rock face and the horse bolted away from danger. When they had stopped short beside the rock face, Tucker reached into his jacket, leaned forward in the stirrups, and fed the animal a carrot. “That’s a good boy,” he said calmly, patting the stallion’s neck as it chomped loudly on the snack. “What a ride, huh, Angela? Like a roller coaster, but better.”
Tucker wasn’t even fazed, Angela realized. They’d come a few inches from certain death, and for him it was as if nothing had happened.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” she gasped.
Tucker gently urged the horse ahead when it had finished the carrot. “What were you asking me about?”
She took a deep breath to calm herself. Her heart was still pounding. “How do you know Jake Lawrence doesn’t deliver on his promises?” she asked again.
“Oh, that’s right,” he remembered, nodding. “Simple. I checked. There was this one girl who told me on the ride back to the lodge all about how Mr. Lawrence was going to take care of her sick mother. Lawrence convinced her of that while the two of them were sitting on the cabin’s couch in front of a fire drinking Irish coffees. She was still pretty drunk and she wasn’t holding back. She told me what went on, and she told me what he’d promised before, during, and after he took her back to the cabin’s master bedroom. I called her a couple of months later, and Lawrence hadn’t done a damn thing for her.”
“How did you know where to find her?”
“I drove her to the airport after taking her back down the mountain, and right before I put her on Lawrence’s plane, I jotted down her telephone number. I told her I was his right-hand man, and that I might need to get in touch with her to follow up. She bought it.”
“And Lawrence hadn’t done anything for her when you called?”
Tucker waved his hand. “Hadn’t even contacted her.”
“What was wrong with her mother?”
“Lung cancer.”
“That’s terrible,” she murmured.
“Exactly what I thought. So I called Lawrence’s accounting sharks in New York and told them we needed fifty grand for a new barn out here. They wired it to me the next day, and I sent it on to the girl.” He patted the horse’s neck again. “Her mother died, but at least she was comfortable during her last few weeks. And the girl didn’t have a pile of medical bills to deal with when her mother was gone.”
“Is all of that really true?” she asked. There was her natural instinct not to believe, not to fully trust even someone she felt comfortable with. The risks had outweighed the rewards too many times.
“You think I’m lying?”
“What if the accounting guys drop by to check up on the new barn? What will you do when they find out what you really did with the money?”
“They won’t. At least, they haven’t yet. And if they do, I’ll get a message to Mr. Lawrence telling him to call off the dogs. If he ignores me, then I’ll call theNational Enquirer and make a million bucks.”
She didn’t ask, but the implication was that he had protected himself by sneaking a photograph. “What you did for that girl seems like a big risk to take for someone you don’t even know.”
Tucker glanced over his shoulder. “You are a tough broad. I guess I oughta believe that your meeting with Mr. Lawrence was just business after all.”
“Yes, you should.” She shivered. It was getting colder as the sun dropped toward the horizon. “How many times have you brought a woman up here for Jake Lawrence?”
“You sound like a reporter.”
“Answer me.”
“More than twice, but that’s all I’ll say.”
“How do you know he’s made promises to those other women?”
“The story I told you isn’t the only one I’ve heard. And she wasn’t the only one I checked up on. And now you sound like a lawyer.”
It was the second time in the last few hours she’d been accused of being a lawyer, which wasn’t unusual. Her father had always encouraged her to be an attorney because he said she never stopped asking how and why. “How can you be so sure Jake Lawrence makes all kinds of promises when you aren’t actually there?”
“I can’t,” Tucker replied, guiding the horse around a sharp rock protruding from the snow. “Are you defending him?”
“No, I . . . “ Her voice trailed off.
“What’s this big project Lawrence wants you to work on?” Tucker asked.
“I can’t say.”
“Oh, I get it. I share a little inside information with you, but now you don’t return the favor. I see how it works.”
“It has to do with a corporate takeover.”
“What company is being taken over?”
“I really can’t tell you that.” She didn’t want to let on that she didn’t know herself. She didn’t want Tucker to doubt the legitimacy of the meeting. “If I did, I’d be violating about twenty securities laws, which could get us both in a boatload of trouble.”
Tucker snorted loudly. For a moment she wasn’t certain if it was him or the horse.
“Here’s a chance for me to make a little money,” he grumbled, “and you’re holding back. I’m not as much of a cowboy as you think. I’ve got a stock portfolio. It ain’t big, but I’ve got one. Come on, Angela, give me a tip.”
“I’m sorry, John, but I really can’t say anything.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Bill Colby’s a scary guy,” Angela commented, trying to change the subject.
“Yeah, I don’t like him much. But he knows what he’s doing,” Tucker admitted grudgingly. “Being head of security for Jake Lawrence is no picnic.”
“Why is Jake Lawrence tougher to guard than any other wealthy person?” she asked, glad Tucker had taken the bait.
“First of all, Mr. Lawrence isn’t just any other wealthy person. He’s probably one of the top ten wealthiest people in the world. One of the accountants in New York told me that if he’s ever kidnapped, Colby has a standing order to pay up to $100 million just on proof of life.”
Angela shook her head. “Lord.”
“That’s why you can’t find pictures of him anywhere. Colby won’t allow it. No pictures makes it tougher on anybody who’s thinking about kidnapping or killing him.” Tucker nodded back over his shoulder in the direction of the cabin. “The army Colby surrounds Lawrence with makes it tougher, too. So do the decoy teams.”
“Decoy teams?”
The horse strayed slightly toward the cliff. Tucker steered the animal closer to the rock face. “Yeah. As I understand it, there are three imposter Jake Lawrences running around the world posing as him. They’ve had plastic surgery to
make them look as much like the real McCoy as possible, and they travel with a personal army just like Mr. Lawrence does. Sometimes they’re with him and sometimes they aren’t.”
It was fascinating, the lengths to which Lawrence went to protect himself. “Why would the teams ever be with Lawrence?”
“If he absolutely has to go somewhere, and it’s an area that Colby determines is ‘hot’ or high-risk, especially if the trip is last minute, Colby may send one of the decoy teams in first.”
“To test the waters.”
“Exactly. Even if the first one makes it to the destination safely, Colby might send a second decoy in while he’s slipping the genuine article into the area in an old pickup truck.”
“Have any of the teams ever been—”
“Attacked?” Tucker interrupted, anticipating her question.
“Yes.”
“Yup. Colby tries to keep all information dealing with Mr. Lawrence’s security very hush-hush, but I understand that we lost a decoy two years ago.” Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “It was a car bomb, and there wasn’t much left. I just hope we took care of the son of a bitch’s family,” he said softly.
“Do you know where the incident occurred?”
“Algeria, I think.”
“Algeria? What in the world would Mr. Lawrence be doing in Algeria?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I don’t remember reading anything about that.”
“Of course not. Jake Lawrence has influential friends in high places, including the press. The incident never made it into the newspaper columns.”
Angela nodded to herself, thinking about how Jake Lawrence seemed to know that theWall Street Journal was considering a follow-up on Liv Jefferson’s articles. “Then based on what you’re telling me, I can’t be certain that was the real Jake Lawrence I just met.”
“That’s true,” Tucker acknowledged, “except for one thing.”
“What?”
“Bill Colby is a control freak. If Colby is around, there’s a good chance the real Jake Lawrence is in the area, too. I’ve tried to tell Bill that unfriendlies may pick up on that, but he doesn’t seem to want to take advice from a cowboy.”
“So I noticed,” Angela said quietly.