The Power Broker

by Stephen Frey

  “You going to go for more than twenty next time?”

  “Twenty-five.” Christian had already started talking to his biggest investors. Based on those discussions, he felt certain he could clear that number.

  “Wow.” Meade smiled. “And I bet you do it. Unless, of course, there’s a hiccup with any of the companies you own now. Then it’ll be tough to get to twenty-five billion.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Christian answered, picking up his water glass. “Our portfolio companies are doing well.”

  “Still don’t drink, huh?” Meade asked.

  Christian hadn’t had a drop of alcohol since the night in high school when he’d wrapped his father’s Porsche around a tree. When he’d come to in the hospital, his father had been standing over him, tears streaming down his face. That image had stuck with Christian forever. He’d vowed never to disappoint his father like that again, even after his father was gone. “Nope.”

  Meade motioned across the room to their waiter for the check. “How’s the Laurel Energy sale going?”

  Everest had bought Laurel using money from the fund that was in place before the current twenty-billion-dollar fund. The Wallace Family had no investment in that fund, so, technically, Meade shouldn’t care how the sale was going. “It’s taken longer than we expected, but I’m sure everything will be fine. Why do you ask?”

  Meade gestured at Allison. “Allison told me it wasn’t going well.”

  Christian’s eyes shot to Allison’s. You never told the outside world about problems until you absolutely couldn’t fix them yourself. Even though Gordon was directly responsible for the Wallace Family investment in the Everest fund, he was still an outsider. The only true insiders were Christian and his five managing partners; even the other employees at the firm weren’t real insiders. Allison should never have said anything to Meade about the Laurel Energy sale. He took a frustrated breath. This was one of the big problems with having your single largest investors actually living at the fund with you—they were conflicted in their loyalties.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t going well, Chris,” she said defensively. “I said exactly what you just said, that it’s taken longer than you expected.” She gave Meade an irritated look. “And it has, that’s true.”

  “It sure would hurt if you couldn’t sell it,” Meade spoke up. “It’d be a real black eye, wouldn’t it? Especially since you thought it was going to be such a grand slam. I think you told me you were going to get five billion for it, didn’t you, Christian?”

  “Yes,” he admitted, ruing the remark. It was almost like Meade wanted Laurel Energy not to sell. Like he didn’t want Everest to be able to raise another fund, especially not a twenty-five-billion-dollar fund. Like he wanted Everest to do poorly after Allison came back to Chicago so Christian couldn’t compete with them.

  “Any other problems in the portfolio?” Meade wanted to know. “Or with any of the companies you’ve taken public?”

  Christian felt his eyes begin to narrow, but he tried to keep his expression even. “No, everything’s fine.”

  Meade nodded. “Good. Because, again, something like that, you know, one of those companies you’ve taken public having problems? That would hurt big-time when you go out and try to raise the next fund. Everything gets so messy with public deals. The SEC gets involved and boom. You and your firm are splashed all over the headlines.”

  “I’m aware of that, Gordon.” Christian couldn’t remember Meade ever being so passive-aggressive with him. “But thanks for the advice.”

  The older man leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach. “Well, that was quite a meal, delicious. Thanks for coming all the way out here to Chicago to update me. I like face-to-face so much better than phones and e-mails. Keep up the good work.”

  “Thanks.” Christian glanced over at Allison. She was folding and refolding her napkin, like she was nervous. Or feeling guilty.

  BLANTON MCDONNELL wheeled the shopping cart down the carpeted aisle of a high-end grocery store in Greenwich, Connecticut, toward the canned soup section. He could have had one of the help come to the store for him, but he wasn’t actually looking for soup. In fact, he didn’t really need anything from the store at all—at least, not any of their products. Of course, he’d thrown a few things in the cart for appearance’s sake, like he always did.

  As McDonnell neared the soup section, he glanced around furtively. Just a couple of women with kids, one of whom was screaming at the top of his lungs. Good. A distraction.

  He quickly found the row of Campbell’s Baked Potato with Cheddar and Bacon Bits soup, a flavor that he and Mace Kohler had determined wouldn’t cycle quickly. Not like chicken noodle or clam chowder, which probably had to be restocked a couple of times a day. He grabbed the cans two at a time, placing them in the cart until he came to the last one. He pulled it from the back of the shelf and held it up, turning it around. There it was, taped to the back of the can. A note from Kohler. He wanted to get together tomorrow night at the place they’d decided on the last time they’d met.

  They never met in the same place twice in a row. It was much too dangerous. You never knew if Hewitt was watching.

  TODD HARRISON pulled his rusty Toyota into a narrow parking space at the run-down apartment complex and skidded to a stop, barely missing the fender of a pickup truck that had its left taillight bashed in. He banged off the headlights with his left hand, at the same time twisting the key with his right and yanking it from the ignition. Then he grabbed his backpack off the ripped passenger seat and jumped out, sprinting up the outdoor steps to the third floor. He rapped loudly on the glass storm door when he reached the small landing outside the apartment. “Come on, George, come on,” he muttered to himself, looking over his shoulder down into the darkness of the empty lot below.

  The door opened and he burst inside, not waiting to be invited in. “Where have you been?” he demanded, tossing the backpack on the sofa beside him as he sat down.

  George Bishop shut the door, then moved to a ratty easy chair beside the couch and fell into it, like it had taken all the energy he had left in his body to answer Harrison’s knock. “Where haven’t I been?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Why’d it take so long to call me? You were supposed to get to me by five. It’s almost eleven.”

  “I’ll tell you if—”

  “You should have been back hours ago.”

  “Hey, are you going to let me talk?”

  “Sorry, yeah, yeah, go ahead.”

  Bishop played with his scruffy beard for a moment as his gray-and-white cat jumped into his lap. “The wind really sucked coming back in from Champagne Island. I don’t know if you could tell from shore, but it blew the surf up something fierce. The waves kept getting bigger and bigger out there. They must have been three or four feet. Never been out in something like that before. I’m a pretty good seaman, but I almost went over a few times.”

  “Jesus, I had no idea. It was a beautiful day here.”

  “Yeah, I know—it was weird. Anyway, I’m fighting it, just trying to keep the bow steady, and all of a sudden I barely miss this Boston Whaler coming the other way. I mean, it was that close.” Bishop held his hands up a foot apart. “I never even saw it coming because the surf was up so high and I was keeping my head down.”

  “Roth,” Harrison said excitedly. “It must have been Roth going back out to Champagne after he met me.”

  “Well, I’ve never seen Roth so I don’t know, and I didn’t really get a look at the guy in the other boat at that point because it all happened so fast.” Bishop chuckled. “But then he started chasing me.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, the fucker turned around and started hauling ass after me.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, so I can’t come back to Southport, you know? If it’s Roth, I don’t want him knowing where the hell I live. So I changed course a
nd went up to Logan, and he tailed me all the way there, plowing through the waves right behind me. As I’m tying up at a dock, he comes running over after he’s tied up his boat, wanting to know what the hell I was doing out there.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him it was a free country, and a free ocean, and I could do whatever the hell I wanted to out there. Then I told him to get the fuck out of my face.” Bishop pushed the cat gently off his lap, walked to the refrigerator, and got a beer. “The guy didn’t like that very much.” He popped the beer open and took several gulps. “Roth. Is he about six feet tall, say one-eighty? Scar over his left eye?”

  “That’s him,” Harrison confirmed.

  “He’s a mean-looking motherfucker,” Bishop said, heading back to the easy chair.

  “So, what happened?” Harrison asked. “Did he just leave?”

  “Nope. After I told him to fuck off, I went to a place on the waterfront to get something to eat, and he followed me inside. Just stared at me from the other end of the bar while I was eating.” Bishop took a deep breath and shook his head. “I had to climb out the men’s room window, haul ass to my boat, and get the hell out of there before he knew what was going on.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Harrison glanced at his backpack. “What about Champagne? Did you find anything?”

  “I found out Roth leaves his wife alone out there. Glad you told me she might be around.”

  Harrison winced. “I was afraid he’d do that. I wanted to ask him if he’d brought her with him when we first sat down. I was going to try to call you on your cell and warn you if you still had reception, but I figured it wouldn’t be a good thing to ask him. Figured he might get suspicious if I did.”

  “Wouldn’t have mattered if you had,” Bishop said. “I lost my antenna halfway out there.”

  Bishop still seemed shaken. He was already almost done with his beer. “Well, what did you find?” Harrison asked.

  “Not much. Landed up by the lighthouse and hoofed it through the woods to the lodge. Tried to make sure no one saw me come ashore. Watched his wife come out of the house and go to a shed, then go back inside.” Bishop raised both eyebrows. “She was wearing a holster with a damn big gun. That made me real nervous.”

  “But nothing suspicious.”

  Bishop relaxed into the chair. “No, not really.” His face scrunched up.

  “What? What is it?”

  “The lodge is built kind of weird.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s big, three full stories.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “And there’s lots of windows,” Bishop kept going, “like the people who built it loved sunlight or something. Except at one corner. Like that was the vampire’s wing or something.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Twenty feet in both directions from one corner of the lodge there’s no windows at all. It’s weird.”

  Harrison shook his head. He’d have to see the place for himself. Hopefully Roth would call. “What about the stuff I sent you the other day? The picture of the old guy and that property ID form?”

  “Don’t worry,” Bishop said confidently. “It’s safe.”

  ROTH TAPPED the desk as he listened to the phone ring at the other end of the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Harry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Harry, it’s Don Roth.”

  “Hey, Don, how you been?”

  “Good, good. Listen, I need a favor.”

  “Anything. Just name it.”

  “I need you to run a trace on a boat registration number,” Roth explained. “The guy’s been circling the island a couple of times, but he takes off when I come out to see what he wants. Last time I used binoculars and got the number off the bow of his boat before I motored out there. I want to find out who he is.”

  There was dead air at the other end. Then: “What’s the number?”

  STEPHANIE CHILDRESS gazed at the picture and smiled. She and Jesse together right after he’d won a small tennis tournament in Vermont, still on the court. Jesse had one arm around her shoulders, the other clutching the trophy, and he was kissing her cheek—like he really cared about her. He’d been the only big name in the tournament—the other stars didn’t want to hoof it to Vermont—but he was so hungry for a win on the tour at that point. It had been two years since the last championship, and people were starting to forget that he’d won the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. At least, that was how he saw it, and it was sad to see him go through that.

  Stephanie glanced into the mirror, then quickly looked away. She was losing her beauty and she hated it. Time was catching up to her. It was so vain to worry about it, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. Jesse didn’t look at her the same way anymore—no one did. She felt a lump rising in her throat. He was looking at younger, prettier women now. He was forgetting how she had been with him through all these years, how loyal she had been. Soon he was going to be president and women were going to be throwing themselves at him. She’d be forgotten. Completely.

  10

  IT WAS JUST past two in the morning and Christian and Allison were at an after-hours club in downtown Chicago. The place was officially closed, but there was a jazz band playing in the back room for a hundred people or so. Allison had a connection at the club—one of the managers—who’d gotten them into the private party. They didn’t know anyone else here, but it didn’t matter. Christian liked jazz, and the band was excellent.

  “You okay?” Allison asked as they stood at the raised bar enjoying an unobstructed view of the stage. She was drinking a rum runner, swaying back and forth slightly to the music and the alcohol.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You seem a little depressed.”

  He glanced over at her. “Depressed?”

  “Okay, distracted.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Truth was, he’d been completely distracted, off in his own world, thinking about the SEC’s pending investigation of CST, Laurel Energy, and—what was eating at him the most—the guy at the transfer station who’d demanded the million-dollar payoff. Quentin was checking the guy out, but, so far, nothing. Quentin hadn’t picked up Carmine Torino’s trail, either. There were dead ends everywhere.

  Christian had been thinking about Faith, too. He’d explained to her over and over how much time Everest took, how so many people wanted his attention. How he had to give it to a lot of them, even though he’d rather give it to her. He thought he’d gotten through to her but apparently not. If he had, she wouldn’t have sent that e-mail.

  He picked up his water glass, feeling Allison’s gaze. She hadn’t been able to take him away from his problems tonight.

  “Fine,” she repeated. “That’s what you always say about everything. Your left arm could be falling off and you’d say you were fine.”

  Christian checked his BlackBerry one more time, hoping Faith had sent another message saying she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant the first one. But nothing. He’d tried calling her several times, but no answer.

  “Watched pots never boil,” Allison said over the music. “Sounds trite but it’s true, if you ask me. What are you waiting for?”

  “Nothing. I check this thing constantly. I’m addicted to it. You’ve been around me long enough to know that.”

  “I’ve been around you long enough not to fall for that explanation. I can tell when you’re waiting for something. You get this expectant-father look about you, like you’ve got on your face right now.”

  Christian managed a half grin. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  Uninhibited was probably a better description. She didn’t seem to care what people thought about what she said or did, and Christian envied that. He’d tried to be like that when he was younger, but he couldn’t let go, not the way she could. Maybe it was the extraordinary wealth she’d been around all her life that made her that way, knowing down deep she could buy anything—or anyone. Maybe it was jus
t her personality, a wild hair stuck in her genes from somewhere.

  He snuck a look at her as he picked up his glass again. Tonight’s outfit wasn’t as revealing as last night’s in Vegas, but it still showed plenty. Everywhere they went, he picked up on the hungry looks of the men watching her. Looks that told him they’d do anything to get him out of the way.

  Christian glanced over his shoulder. Quentin was sitting on a stool next to him, also sipping water. “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Go back to the hotel and get some sleep.”

  Quentin shook his head. “Nope. It’s my job to make sure you get home all right. I’ll stay as late as I have to.”

  Quentin was being a chaperone. “Get one of your guys to take over.”

  “It’s after two o’clock, Chris. How much longer you going to stay out?”

  “As long as I want him to,” Allison answered firmly, stepping in front of Christian, then turning and tousling his dark hair. “This is my city and I get to keep him out until the break of dawn if I want to.” She smiled suggestively. “Why don’t you loosen up a little and have a drink?”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “Come on,” she pleaded, “just one.”

  “I don’t need a drink to have fun.”

  Allison finished what was left of her rum runner and signaled to the bartender that she wanted another. “Is it the Laurel Energy thing that’s got you all tensed up?” she asked as the band finished a number and the audience broke into loud applause.

  “No, but you didn’t have to tell Gordon things weren’t going well with it.”

  “He brought it up, Chris.” She took the fresh drink from the bartender. “By the way, I got a call the other day from some guy at Black Brothers Allen about Laurel. I meant to tell you that.”