"Joe says that?" Tommy asked.
"If this is an up-and-up deal, it will be for sale tomorrow or next week. You don't have to buy it now. If you insist, we can negotiate an option today, preserve all your rights, and then, after I've checked it out, we can let go of the cash."
It was a solution that would never work for Beano. Alex would surely discover the fraud if given enough time to investigate. Beano had to up the stakes.... So, he moved back to Ellen's desk, borrowed a pencil, and wrote a note for her while Alex was slowly getting Tommy to reconsider.
"What's it matter if you buy it today? Look, big purchases don't happen like this. You don't roll in with a suitcase full of cash and plunk it down. That's insane. Do it the way Joe would do it. Do it smart." Alex had finally found the right tune to play, and Tommy was listening and nodding.
Beano handed the note to Ellen. She read it and stood up. "You can wait in Mr. Spencer's office while Miss Luna gets the approval for you to attend the meeting," she said, as she showed them to a nearby office.
They entered and looked out of the huge plate-glass window. Across the street, the Exxon double locking x's were shining. Ellen left them in the office and closed the door. Then she handed Beano's note to her husband, Steve. Rig a chill and play the cross-fire, the note read.
There was a computer in the office where they were waiting. Tommy watched as Beano turned it on and booted it up.
"I'm telling you," Alex went on relentlessly, "we can hold our dirt. If they're really in cash trouble, time is working for us, not against us."
Beano had the Quotron stock report up, and he motioned to Tommy and Alex.
"Look't this," he said, and he punched in FCP&G and they watched the stock ticker report. "This stock was trading at ten yesterday, this morning it's down to five and seven eighths and whoa, no ... look't this ..."
Tommy leaned in and, as they talked, he saw the stock drop from five and seven-eighths to five and three-fourths. Again, Victoria's program had overridden the real Quotron ticker, and Fentress County fell right before their eyes.
"This fucking thing is dropping faster than a bad tit job," Tommy said, glaring at the screen.
"Mr. Rina," Beano said, "I don't mean to stand here and argue with Mr. Cordosian, brilliant in legal matters as I'm sure he is, but I've been in the oil business for fifteen years. This stock is about to get frozen by the Vancouver Exchange. An insider is obviously dumping stock without notifying the Board. They've gotta be looking at this. A stock goes from ten to five and three-quarters, loses almost half its value in one day, and you don't think the Exchange is gonna stop trading and delist it? Once that happens, we are absolutely out of the game. Maybe your brother thinks if there's a clock in a deal there's a problem, but I'm sure he wasn't contemplating a foreign stock exchange taking the whole transaction out of our hands. We have one hell of an opportunity here. But we've gotta suck it up, be a little brave, and move now."
Then the door opened and Ellen Bates stuck her head in. "Miss Luna says you can join the stockholders' meeting. It's on the floor below, in the big conference room. I can show you down."
Tommy picked up his briefcase and they all followed her out of the office to the elevator.
The stockholders' meeting was more of a shouting match than a meeting. Miss Luna, a.k.a. Victoria Hart, was trying to maintain some control, but the Bates point-out players were screaming at her and each other.
"You can't be serious!" Leonard X. Bates was shouting. "If we don't make a move now, take this into our own hands, we're going to get frozen. One or more of us is selling and killing the market for everyone else. We have to move now, Laura. Sell the Tennessee land, dispense the assets. I understand we have a buyer on that property."
Everybody started talking at once.
"Mr. Lacy had very strong opinions about liquidating that asset, and the offer on the table is ridiculous," Victoria yelled out. "Once we do that, we're basically out of business. That property is leveraged against our bank loan. Besides, we feel we have certain development fields that show wonderful promise. We're not in a crisis situation here, at least not yet."
"If we're not, I'd sure as hell like to see your definition of a crisis!" Theodore Bates barked.
"I'm holding way too much of this paper. I'm not gonna stand here and eat it, sheet by sheet," another sharper yelled.
"This is the worst quarterly P and A field report I've seen in twenty years," another interrupted.
And then everybody in the room started shouting over one another and Victoria was clapping her slender, out-of-proportion hands to get them all to quiet down. "If we can please speak one at a time," she yelled, but arguments were raging all around the table.
Beano leaned toward Tommy. "This thing is so ripe. We won't even need the whole five mil. Make an offer."
Tommy looked over at Alex, who shook his head, and Tommy leaned back. He was going to wait, like he thought his brother Joe would do.
Beano was stuck, so he flashed a sign at Theodore. It was time to play the cross-fire.
"Miss Luna, I want to adjourn for a while. I have partners in Texas I need to speak with. Could we have a few minutes, please?" Theodore yelled.
The din in the room lessened with planned orchestration, so Victoria could give her line. "Okay, I think we all need to cool down. Weil take five."
"I know this fat broad from someplace," Tommy said. "I fucking can't pin it down, but when it comes to pussy, even ugly pussy, I got fucking unbelievable instincts."
"Let's go find a room to talk," Beano said.
He moved with Tommy and Alex out of the conference room. All of the sharpers were growling and arguing at the turn of events, cursing the falling stock and the stockholder among them who was selling. They filed out into the hallway. Beano led Tommy and Alex to an empty office.
All the offices on twenty-four were less impressive than the ones on twenty-five. The offices had half-walls with decorative, frosted glass up to the ceiling to create an open feeling.
Beano motioned them into an office, then hesitated. "I gotta take a quick leak," he said. "Be right back." He closed the door, counted to ten, then opened the door and quickly re-entered the office.
"Fuck! I knew it!" he exclaimed, turning Tommy and Alex around. "He's here. He's fucking here. I knew it!"
"Who's here?" Tommy said.
"Dr. Sutton. He's talking to that old guy, Theodore Lanaman, the guy who called for the recess. They just went into an office across the hallway."
"You think he's making a deal with that guy?" Tommy said, concern crossing his feral features.
"Of course. Whatta you think? He's not at this stockholders' meeting to give a geophone report. We're fucked," Beano said, totally defeated. He pointed at Alex. "If you hadn't listened to this guy, we could've already owned this thing."
"Where is he? Let's go see," Tommy said, then opened the door and walked out. Beano and Alex followed.
Beano pointed to the office across the hall; then Tommy saw that there was a door right next to it. He opened it. It led to a secretarial area which was between two executive offices. One was the office that Duffy and Theodore were in. The other was empty.
They walked into the secretarial area and looked through the frosted-glass dividing wall that separated them from Duffy and Theodore. They could see Duffy talking animatedly, but his voice and image were muffled by the decorative glass partition. Beano finally found the secretary's speakerphone and hit a button. Immediately they could hear the conversation, because Beano had connected the speakers between the two phones:
"... I been doing it just like we planned," Theodore was saying, and through the distorting glass they could see him holding up a piece of paper. "These are the trading slips."
Duffy was standing facing him, his Einstein hair frizzy in the distorted backlight. Beano grabbed a miniature tape recorder out of his pocket to record the conversation.
"I'm telling you, Mr. Lanaman, they won't find out you're the one sel
ling.... The price is going down. It's already in the mid-fives."
Beano, Alex, and Tommy were hunkered over the speakerphone, eavesdropping, while Beano recorded the "betrayal."
"I'll call my broker and dump the rest of my stock. That should drive it down to the mid-fours and then they'll be desperate to sell. It gets me out at an average price of about six, which is not all that bad."
"Then let's get to work," Duffy said as they left the office and Beano turned off the recorder.
"If Sutton told him about the field and all the oil, why is he selling his stock?" Tommy asked, his brow knit. Business had always been hard for him. It wasn't like clipping guys where you just stepped up and did it. In business you tried to fool them or bluff them. Sometimes it just didn't make sense.
"It's very simple," Beano said slowly. "He wants the stock price to fall so these other stockholders will panic and sell him their stock right now. He'll pick up control of the company for bubkes."
Tommy looked at Alex. "Zat sound right?" he asked. Alex thought for a second then nodded. "Yeah... it's probably exactly what he's doing," he agreed, beginning to be a believer himself. "By buying it here at the stockholders' meeting, he doesn't have to buy it over the counter and create a higher and higher market as he goes. He also avoids the five-day stock exchange clearing procedure. Pretty damn smart," Alex said grudgingly.
"It's fish-or-cut-bait time," Beano said. "It's us or them or it's the V.S.E. in Vancouver. This time tomorrow this company and that billion-dollar field is gonna belong to somebody else. I'm saying it should be us."
Victoria reconvened the stockholders' meeting, and as they sat at the now more subdued table, Duffy walked into the room and sat behind Theodore Bates.
"Who is this gentleman?" Victoria asked in her breathy Miss Luna voice.
"He's my assistant," Theodore said in his authoritative Mr. Lanaman voice. "And I'd like to make an offer to everybody in this room. I understand you want out, but I think it would be nothing short of criminal to sell that Tennessee land grant for what's being offered. I always believed in this company and in Chip Lacy, so I'm willing to buy your stock certificates, the Class-A as well as the outstanding Class-C, at one point over Close of Market today."
Immediately the room broke into a flurry of discussion. Finally, the buzz died down and the stockholders looked over at Theodore.
"Why would you do that? The stock is dropping like a rock," one of the point-out sharpers asked Theodore.
"Frankly? Because I've been semi-retired for a year and I'm bored. I'd like to give running this place a shot. Gimme something to do, but I'm not gonna spend that much time and energy unless I own it."
Beano looked over at Tommy, and now Tommy nodded, so Beano exploded to his feet. "He's not trying to own it. He's trying to steal it! It's Lanaman who's been selling his stock and knocking the price down so he can buy it for nothing."
"That's patently absurd," Theodore thundered.
"Is it?" Beano asked rhetorically, as he turned on the little tape recorder and set it on the polished mahogany table.
Through the speaker they could hear Theodore's voice: "I been doing it just like we planned. These are the trading slips." Then Duffy was saying, "I'm telling you, Mr. Lanaman, they won't find out you're the one selling.... The price is going down. It's already in the mid-fives." Then Theodore again: "I'll call my broker and dump the rest of my stock. That should drive it down to the mid-fours and then they'll be desperate to sell. It gets me out at an average price of about six, which is not all that bad."
Beano turned off the tape and the room exploded in anger.
"My offer still stands," Theodore shouted.
"You get the hell out of here," one of the sharpers yelled at Theodore. "I wouldn't sell you my stock at gunpoint!"
"Get out of this meeting, you son-of-a-bitch," another yelled, and he was on his feet grabbing for Theodore X. Bates, who, along with Duffy, made a hasty exit from the room. Once he was gone, they all sat there looking at one another.
"Too bad," one of the sharpers said. "I was hoping I could sell. I wish we could find another buyer."
Beano looked pointedly at Victoria. "Tell him, Miss Luna," he said. "You've a fiduciary duty. You can't withhold that kinda information."
"Well, I just... It seems to me we're all panicking."
"Tell him!" Beano said firmly, and then Victoria turned to the room full of sharpers.
"Well, there was another offer this morning, but I think--"
"Another offer?!" they all said, before she could finish. They were astounded.
Now it was Tommy who rose majestically to his feet. He felt exactly the way he knew Joe must feel when he was closing a well-planned deal.
"I'm willing to pay cash money, one point over C.O.M."
"Over what?" one of them asked.
"Over C.O.M., Close of Market," Tommy said.
"They don't call it C.O.M.," Beano whispered. "It's just called Close of Market."
"Oh," Tommy said. "Well, I'll buy all your stock up to five million dollars."
"You gotta deal," one sharper yelled.
"Count me in," another yelled, rising to his feet, pulling his prop stock certificates out of his briefcase.
Tommy smiled. He liked doing business on his terms. He decided it was just like clipping guys, only your dick didn't get quite as hard. Then he left Beano to sort out the sellers, while he and Alex went down to get the two suitcases of cash out of the trunk of Tommy's car.
They returned to a selling frenzy. Each sharper handed over his certificates, and Tommy gave him the appropriate amount of cash. It was in banded packages of hundreds, right out of Joe's dead-drop room in Nassau. In less than two hours the transaction was complete.
Once the sharpers had left with their money, Tommy was seated with fifty or sixty stock certificates in a pile in front of him and a satisfied smile on his face. He told Beano it was time to have a party and celebrate.
"I hope you're happy," Miss Luna said angrily to Beano. "You own the company. It'll probably kill Mr. Lacy." And she moved out of the conference room in a huff.
"I know that cunt from someplace," Tommy said after she was gone. But, for the life of him, he still couldn't remember from where.
While Tommy was packing up the stock certificates and Alex was instructing him that they should be immediately placed in a safety deposit box, Beano found Victoria in the President's office.
She was looking out the window at the oil buildings across the street. Her stocky legs were spread wide to balance the heavy load of padding. She was in a pensive mood and, with a delicate hand up to her mouth, was looking down the street. She wondered how many Feds were down there. Beano came in, and she spun around as he locked the door.
"Great job," he said, and she nodded without enthusiasm. "What's wrong?" he said, picking up her mood.
Victoria could not lie to him for another moment. As she stood there, a completely disparate thought hit her. She knew in that instant she really loved him. Strange as it was, he had crept into her every waking thought, coloring all her values and perceptions with his personality.
"Beano ... the police know all about this," she said slowly, hating every word she uttered. "For all I know they're outside the door right now."
"How could they?" he said, still smiling, but looking at her closely. It was hard to read her expression behind all of the makeup.
"Because I told them."
"You told them?" The smile died slowly on his handsome face. "Why?"
"They picked me up in Jersey coming out of Joe's office. I stumbled into a Federal stake-out." Then she sat on the edge of the desk, and while he listened in utter disbelief, she told him about everything that had happened since her return to San Francisco.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he said after she finished, his feelings hurt.
"I was ashamed, I guess. Now I know it was a mistake. I know I can't trust Gil Green to keep his word. He'll double-cross me. He only car
es about one thing and that's getting into the Governor's Mansion. If I didn't do what he said, they would have killed you."
Beano looked at her for a long moment.
"Whatta we gonna do?" she said, after long moments of uncomfortable silence. She was feeling utterly helpless and totally responsible.
"I guess we better start a fire," he finally said.
Chapter Thirty-Three.
PLAYING AGAINST THE WALL
THE CALL CAME FROM THE HYSTERICAL EXECUTIVE AT exactly twelve-thirty-five in the afternoon.
"This whole place is on fire!" Victoria screamed through the receiver and then, while the Fire Department dispatcher was talking, the call came in from the building's Direct-Dial Sentry Fire Alarm System. They had electronic confirmation of the blaze at the Penn Mutual Building. "We're trapped up here! We can't go down, the stairs are filled with smoke."
"Go to the roof," the dispatcher on the phone told the panicked C.E.O. "Get everybody up there."
Grady Hunt saw the smoke billowing out of the twenty-fifth-floor windows from his surveillance position across the street. He immediately sensed he was in trouble. He and Denniston ran inside the building just as the first Fire Marshal's unit screeched up.
"Hey, you can't go in there!" the Fire Marshal yelled, but Grady ran in anyway, with Denniston right on his heels.
The building lobby was clear of smoke, but the elevators were full of people from all floors, pouring out in a panic. The alarms were ringing loudly. Grady was knocked down on his way into the elevator, and then run over like a calf in a stampede.
The Fire Marshal grabbed Grady, pulling him to his feet. "I'm not gonna tell you again! We have a three-alarm on the twenty-fifth floor."
"Get your fucking hands off me, Smoky," Grady said, pulling out his badge and pushing it in the fireman's face.
"I don't care if you're President Fucking Clinton. Get the hell out of this building, asshole!" the Fire Marshal screamed.
Then Grady and Denniston grabbed the startled man, knocked him down, and jumped into the elevator. They made it all the way up to the twenty-fourth floor, where the elevator computer-locked and prevented them from going any higher. They jumped out, found the fire stairs, and ran up to the top floor of the building. Smoke was billowing down the staircase at them, and when they got to twenty-five, they could see why.... There were two huge wastebasket fires burning on the top landing.
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