by John Oakes
"Feel like telling me why you did this?"
Cody intentionally took his time in responding. Tagg was angry. It was Cody's turn to play this game. Tagg would eventually outmaneuver him, but as long as Cody had him on the ropes, he would enjoy it.
Cody leaned forward and decided not to stand.
"You know exactly why." Cody let each word hang in the air, dripping with significance.
Cody held Tagg's stare, letting him ponder his next move.
"This...this action, has upset our guests and our clients. They have certain expectations."
"Tagg, you brought us here to entertain with the quality of our performance and our service. If you wanted to start a whore house, you could have just left us out of it."
"I brought you here, because you, for the first time in your life, struck me as a man who was ambitious, and was also willing to buck societal norms. Or at least a fool who didn't know any better."
Cody heard something in Tagg's voice break as he said those last words. Something about Tagg seemed different now. After years of being pestered by the schoolyard bully, Cody had almost forgotten him after only a few months of being around "business Tagg." But here he was again. It wasn't new. It was what had always lurked beneath.
"Well, if I haven't made it clear already," Cody said, "let me underline it for you. I am not a pimp and there will be no sexual contact between our employees and our guests. There will be no harassment of the employees or attempts to solicit them for sex or any other act I deem degrading."
"Ah," Tagg said. He smiled. "So, somebody found their balls."
Tagg shifted his weight and leveled a hand at Cody. "Let me ask you this. How is it not degrading to dress up in a costume and dance around like fucking monkey for money? But it's the end of the goddam world for a masseuse to give a..." Tagg bobbed his head back and forth, "...A sensual massage?"
"Well, Tagg, because for starters, one is legal and one is not."
"Well, I hate to play sociology professor, but our laws are reflective of Judeo-Christian attitudes toward sex, to which our guests may not subscribe."
"Fine. You got me." Cody gestured a hand over his desk. "Some people got different ideas. But maybe you didn't hear me. I'm not a pimp. If it goes on under my roof, I am going to stop it."
"You care nothing for the money you will lose?" Tagg asked. "If you proceed in the manner you are suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting nothing. I'm telling you the way it is and will be."
Tagg's response was telling, but of what, Cody wasn't sure. "Why do you care so much, Tagg? Why do you seem so intent on pushing this nonsense when we can make plenty of money with a wholesome approach?"
"Because," Tagg said, stepping up to the desk and clenching a fist over it, "when I squeeze the juice from a lemon, I don't leave a single drop inside."
"These are people Tagg. Not citrus fruits for you to squeeze. Now if you wanna go off and start your whorehouse, you do that. And anyone here who wants to go work for you there is free to do so."
"Do you really think you can stop me? Do you think you will stand in my way?" Tagg's voice rippled coldly through the room, like ice down Cody's back.
Cody considered this, not letting himself break eye contact. So it had come to this then. Threats? From what Cody was coming to understand, you made threats when you had no other recourse. Then again some threats could be made good. He supposed if Tagg wanted to smash him business-wise, he could probably figure out a way to do so, eventually. But for now, Cody didn't see how. So he stood his ground.
"I'm gonna try to do what I think is right," Cody said with simple calm, wishing he could have come up with something slightly more biting.
"You..." Tagg spat out. "You think you're a businessman?" Tagg left his mouth in a sneer and started nodding slightly. "You're not. You're a lazy, stupid, spoiled, rich boy. You do one thing in your life and you think all of sudden you're a big man, eh?"
Cody looked at his hands and then back to Tagg, who continued his insults.
"You have no place in business. You want to hold hands and dance like a little boy at daycare. This isn't daycare. This is a business. Maybe you should come to understand that and leave this place to real businessmen. Yeah, maybe you go back to your swimming pool in Daddy's back yard."
Cody felt himself instinctively wilting like a flower in the hot sun. He wanted to respond, but his steely reserve was gone now, replaced with a tightening throat, burning eyes and a spinning abject fear that he was all those things and worse.
Tagg seemed to edge closer, going for the kill. "I won't deign to scrape shit like you off my shoe. I would rather throw the shoe away. Yes, maybe I need to pay to have some one else clean this shoe for me. Maybe I pay to make the shit stain go away."
Tagg stalked out of the room.
Cody spent much of the next day in his dorm room, a drab space brightened only by a Lord of The Rings movie poster and dirty socks. He lay on his bed, watching TV on his computer. He only got up to go to the bathroom or to grab a beer or a snack from his mini fridge. The day was a well-choreographed dance. Beer in, beer out, beer in, beer out.
He wasn't sulking, he told himself. He was entitled to a day off. He'd been though a lot. He figured if anyone saw him, he would look pretty pathetic, but he didn't care. He couldn't care. And he didn't have to care either, as long as he could stay in that room, marathoning episodes of Battlestar Galactica.
Day turned to night and Cody eventually slept. He awoke the next morning, feeling set to burst from the contents of his bladder, despite the fact that he had woken up to pee twice in the night. He sat in his underwear on the edge of his bed and silently drank from a bottle of water. He scratched and stretched and considered his fate.
Would Tagg have him killed? Was he playing with that sort of fire here? What were those Japanese gangsters called? Cody googled it on his phone. Yakuza. Yeah those dudes sounded pretty insane. Maybe Tagg knew a Yakuza. He was, after all, into pimping people, and God knew what else for Japanese businessmen. Cody imagined himself getting his fingers or worse cut off while tied to a chair. Would he have to agree to run an Old Western-themed brothel if he wanted to keep his fingers and/or testes?
Cody figured he had been AWOL long enough. He showered, dressed and made his way across the courtyard to the main house. He tried to wave to those he passed, but he couldn't be asked to smile, not with his impending Yakuza torture.
Cody found Winton and Jason eating breakfast in Winton's office, talking about the upcoming college football season. They looked up, ready to greet him. Cody opened his mouth to say hello, but instead said, "I think Tagg is going to have me whacked...or something."
Saying it aloud made the notion sound more real and more ridiculous simultaneously. He was forced to recount the entire tale, noting in particular how Tagg had grown more and more aggressive when Cody had refused to bend or take his bait.
"Wow, what an enormous asshole," Jason said.
"Seriously. He was really that rude to you?" Winton asked skeptically.
"I've told you both, repeatedly, my history with him. This goes deep. I honestly don't think I've even fully conveyed to you the venom." Cody sat down hard in a chair by the door. "What day is it?"
"It's July 25th. Monday," Jason said checking his watch.
"How many guests do we have today?" Cody asked Winton.
"None actually. Everyone checks out in a couple hours. We don't get any new groups until Wednesday I think. Maybe Thursday. Slow week, I guess. But the weekend bookings look fantastic."
"Guys, should I just make for Mexico or something? Lay low with the cousins for a while?"
"Cousins?" Winton asked.
"Cody is a quarter Mexican. I don't just mean Hispanic, but like actual Mexican. Not like how people call any soda, "Coke".
"Thanks for the clarification," Winton said glibly.
"My mom's mom is from northern Mexico," Cody said. "I have family there and in El Paso. Haven't really met most of
them, though."
A call came up from Glen at the front desk. A courier arrived and needed Cody's signature. Cody walked downstairs into the expansive lobby and was handed a manila envelope inside a plastic bag sealed with red tape.
Cody walked back upstairs and tore open the packet. He looked over the papers, trying to decipher them. He handed them to Jason, who was more or less taking them out of his hands anyway.
"We the undersigned...by vote of...shares in Cody Corp..."
"What is it?" Cody asked? "Are they suing me? Taking me to court?"
Jason handed the papers to Winton.
"I think it's an offer," Jason said turning his face to Cody's. "To buy your shares in Cody Corp."
"Shit," Winton said. "Cody that's exactly what this is. They are offering 450 dollars a share."
Winton was clearly astonished.
"So much for getting your fingers cut off," Jason said.
Cody almost laughed. "What? Buying me out? That is what he meant? Jesus it sounded so goddam sinister."
Winton did some quick math. "You own how many shares in Cody Corp?"
"I don't know, almost half, but I forget. Jason do you remember?"
Jason looked down, ticking things off on his fingers.
"You own like eight or nine hundred shares."
They all looked around at one another doing mental math. "That's like $400,000," Winton said. "Jesus, Cody, that is serious cash."
"I bet you could get a cool half million out of them!" Jason said, ever the one to fantasize about getting more money.
Cody just sat down and ran a hand through his unkempt brown hair and held it there. He exhaled heavily through closed lips.
"Are they offering to buy any other stock?" Winton asked.
"It doesn't say anything about that that I can see." Jason was holding the sheaf of papers again.
"Half a million dollars..." Cody murmured.
"That's halfway!" Jason said.
Cody shot him a horrified look and then glanced instinctively to Winton who was pacing the room slowly in a world of his own.
"...To having enough to buy those four Ferraris you wanted."
Cody rolled his eyes in intense frustration at Jason.
Winton seemed too lost in his own thoughts to pick up on anything Jason had just said. Cody glared again at Jason who showed his bottom teeth and widened his eyes in alarm at how close he had come to blowing it for Cody. Winton had been understanding enough of Cody being the son of a rich family, but neither he nor any other participant in Midget Island 3000 knew about his grampa's challenge.
Half a million would be a considerable step toward the end goal. And he still had August, September and October left to complete the challenge. With a half million in capital he might still be able to do it. He needed Jason to crunch the numbers for him though. They had to get alone for a bit, so they could speak frankly.
"So, are you gonna take it?" Winton asked soberly. Something in his eyes seemed less than thrilled at the proposition.
"I don't know, man. I gotta think it through. Do you think you can hold down the fort, if I take the day in San Antonio?"
Winton looked at Cody, their eyes level to one another as Cody was seated and Winton was standing.
"Yeah man. No problem."
************
Ricky adjusted his yellow shooting glasses and pulled out a cigarette. He put it in his mouth and rooted through the left pocket of his jean shorts for a lighter. Cody could see it outlined in the bottom of the pocket, poking out past the tattered hem of Ricky's cut offs. Ricky found it, lit his cigarette and looked out over the picnic tables that served as the outside seating for Pablito's Smokehouse. It was a mild day for San Antonio in July, barely hitting 90 at midday. The large green canopy above the tables kept the sun off, while a warm, but soothing breeze blew out of the southwest.
"Half a million, huh?" Ricky flicked ash onto the yellowing grass under the picnic tables. "A lot of money."
"Hell yeah it's a lot of money," Jason said. "It's probably more than he could make by the first week of November just from the resort."
Jason had explained three times in the car how he had come to that conclusion. The Island was very profitable, but taking the buyout would put him much closer to the finish line than if he kept taking a salary and stock dividends. In that sense, Tagg's offer had taken into consideration the success and viability of the business.
Ricky nodded slowly as he took a couple more long drags. "It's a close one."
"Whaddaya mean close? It ain't gonna happen with the resort, barring some sort of miracle. Unless we strike oil out there." Then, turning to Cody, Jason said, "You've come a long way. But maybe," Jason said, hands splayed, "now hear me, maybe this magical run of ours has come to an end. You keep saying this Tagg guy and his cronies are dirty. This deal's been rotten at its core since the beginning, right, like you said? We just couldn't see it then."
Jason started gnawing on a rib and then pulled it back out of his mouth to say, "And we didn't have any better ideas, so we jumped into bed with him. It was a fair gamble, and now it's run its course. You said it yourself. You can't keep outmaneuvering this guy for much longer. He has mercifully seen the business sense in giving you a way out."
Cody picked up a rib of his own. He pulled at the tender meat and tried to savor it, but his mind was whirling too much to enjoy food. Tagg's offer had been the last thing Cody ever expected. But after a few hours of thinking on it, it did help Cody understand why Tagg had put the hard press on him to profit. He didn't want to get out of the property anymore. He saw the profitability and wanted to stay in. It all made sense now.
But no matter how much sense Jason made, something ate at Cody. He filtered through the cloud of dust in his mind, searching for that pebble in his shoe that was unsettling him. Was it merely the thought of leaving a place he helped build? Was it leaving the friends he'd made there? Yes, of course it was those things...but something more.
He thought of the kitchen, the golf course, the unfinished room he had lived in for two months during construction. He thought of Kazuko's duel, how Cody had somehow created something that others wanted to inhabit. He thought of Winton sharing scotch with him and their feet up on the desk.
Winton.
Winton had asked if Cody's was the only stock they'd offered to buy. Was Winton trying to get rid of his stock in Cody Corp? Was he thinking of making a buck? Despite his executive status, he only owned about ten shares. It didn't make sense. Besides, he made good money as a manager. He and Missy were solvent, getting debt free again, and were financially secure for the first time in a long time.
No, Winton wouldn't want out. He would be rightly afraid of seeing the business he helped build from day one, die a slow, rotting death because Cody wouldn't be there to stop Tagg and his desire for personal enrichment at all human costs. Simply losing his job wouldn't be the worst of it. Winton finally was free to be the leader and the planner he was born to be. He, as much as Cody, had carved out an island home for himself. And now it was falling apart.
Cody felt terrible that it hadn't occurred to him earlier. But considering that he'd awoken that morning fearing reprisal from the Yakuza and spent the rest of the day mulling an offer for the princely sum of half a million dollars, maybe it was forgivable. But if he took the buyout, it wasn't just Winton who would suffer. What did Midget Island 3000 mean to all of the workers? To some it was perhaps just another job, at a place with a silly name. But to Jean Baptiste with his specialized kitchen? To Glen with his first full-time job in ages that let him care for his ailing mother? To Ramon and Diego, Jerell and Tanya? To the Sophias of the world?
No, for some, Midget Island was the first place they had ever worked where they could feel truly accepted, and not just because things like chairs and stovetops were the right height.
"What do you think Ricky?" Cody asked.
Ricky had, after all, sunk quite a lot of money into the business and so had some sor
t of stake in Cody's decision.
But Ricky didn't seem to have any words of wisdom, deferring instead to Jason's more intimate knowledge of the business affairs of Midget Island 3000. They finished their meal, leaving Cody more confused about his affairs than when they'd started. They left in Jason's car and Ricky asked to go home. When they stopped in front of Ricky's trailer, Ricky clapped Cody on the shoulder before he got out, perhaps sensing Cody's frustration and anxiety.
"I can't tell you what to do here. Just do what feels right, Cody. Then work out the details. Follow your gut."
Ricky gave Cody's shoulder another pat. He got out of the car, stepped past a stack of car wheels and up the steps to the door of his trailer.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Arboretum
Jason dropped Cody off at the pool house, and Cody texted Kelly for the second time that day. She had agreed to meet with him earlier. Now he was asking her to come to him, since he had no car, and didn't like to borrow any of his dad's classics. God forbid. He was enough of a screw up without the very small chance of anything getting scraped or dinged. Cody passed four hours lazing by the pool, taking dips and working on his tan.
He went up to the main house to say hello to Anita, who made him a sandwich and rattled off a hundred questions about where Cody was living and what he was doing there. She began telling him about her family news from Guatemala when Cody spotted a sedan creeping down the white gravel side drive that ended a few yards from the cement slabs bordering the pool. Cody kissed her on the cheek and thanked her for the sandwich.
Cody whistled loudly across the fifty yards of lawn he still had to cross when he saw Kelly peering through the glass-paned doors fronting the pool house. She turned around, shielded her eyes from the sun and waved. He thought he could see a wide smile.
They strode through the relatively cool shade of the arboretum and Cody ran her through the recent developments.
"In short, business is solid, booming even, but I'm certain that if I leave or stay, Tagg will stop at nothing to turn the whole thing into a den of wickedness."