by Camel Press
“Ah. Savvy.”
She turned her laptop toward him. “Now, the Point Mutual office here in town has a financial planner, Mr. Sam Masterhead, whose credentials include an MBA from Northwestern, a love of sports and experience with many high-profile clients. Also,” Cat cleared her throat and adopted a phony southern accent, “a Judy from Texas Steaks just called to verify that a two-hundred-thirty-dollar check we received from a Mr. Joel Faulk for a real fine cut of ribeyes would clear. He told us we could confirm it with a Sam something or other?”
“Aren’t you just …” Benji mocked her accent, “slippery as snot on a glass doorknob.”
Cat giggled and resumed her regular voice. “She told me that would be Mr. Masterhead, but he was out of the office.”
“How helpful. Sounds like they run a really tight ship.”
“We’re gonna find out because we have an appointment with him at three. You’re done with your class at two today, right?”
Benji cleared his throat. “Um … perhaps I’ve misled you, but I have no money to invest in pork bellies or gold reserves.” His eyes began to twinkle as he pointed at the life-size Chewbacca. “My portfolio is already diversified through Wookiee bellies and gold kryptonite.”
Cat glanced down at her engagement ring, running her index finger over the gold band. This wasn’t the first time she’d wondered if its 14K didn’t stand for kryptonite rather than karat. It didn’t quell her suspicions when Benji mentioned a desire that his own wedding ring be a Lord of the Rings replica. She supposed she should be grateful it wasn’t a Green Lantern power ring.
“He doesn’t need to know that you are a big dork with a Comic Con credit card. I told his secretary we’re looking for a trustworthy advisor to help us plan for a large sum of money you just inherited from your Grandfather Levy.”
“Grandpa Levy passed away when I was in high school.”
“What’d he do for a living?”
“He was a boilermaker.”
“He taught at Purdue?”
Benji laughed. “No, a boilermaker, as in, he welded huge steel containers that hold liquids and gases under massive amounts of pressure.”
“Oh.” She blushed. “I just thought, since you and your dad were both teachers, he probably was, too.”
“My dad was able to get his teaching degree because of his dad’s hard work.”
“Aww.” She tapped her finger on the table. “That’s a nice story, but not for a banker. We need something that sounds a little more one-percenty. How about an oil tycoon?”
Benji laughed. “There aren’t a whole lot of Jewish immigrants sporting bolos and cowboy boots in Long Island.”
“Okay, then let’s go with real estate investor.”
He gave her a sidelong glance.
“What?" she asked with faux innocence. "He had a house, didn’t he?”
Benji grabbed an issue of the Wall Street Journal from the office’s coffee table and held it squarely in front of his face. “Who am I supposed to be again?”
“Shh!” She stole a look at the receptionist’s desk, but the headset-wearing blonde was busy reading a book. She pulled the newspaper down to his lap. “You’re you.”
“Then who are you supposed to be?”
“I’m me. We’re not undercover, we don’t have aliases, we’re just Cat and Benji … looking for a secure place to put our money.”
“Right. Grandpa Levy’s legacy. Oil.”
“No, real estate.”
“Real estate. Did he have a monocle? I’m picturing a monocle.”
She frowned. “He had whatever you want him to have as long as it comes with an inheritance.”
“I think he had a monocle then. And one of those black top hats.” With a mock dreamy expression, he sighed, “Dear ol’ Grampy Warbucks.”
The receptionist’s phone beeped and she carefully folded down the page of her book before wiggling out of her seat. “Mr. Masterhead is ready for you.”
She escorted them down the hallway, where a trim, handsome man in his early forties met them in the doorway of a corner office. Sunlight poured through a picture window and reflected off his short, spiky blond hair, accentuating his bronzed face. He drew a hand out from the pocket of a crisp pinstriped suit that might grace Gordon Gekko’s closet and offered it to Benji.
“I’m Sam Masterhead. You must be the soon-to-be happy newlyweds.”
Cat grimaced. This bothered her more than the nightmares: people jinxing them before they even got started. How did they know they were going to be happy? There was almost a fifty percent chance they’d be squabbling over the crystal before the end of the decade.
She pasted a smile on anyway. “Yes, I’m Catriona McDaniel and this is Benjamin Levy.”
Benji took the proffered hand. “Of the Nevadan Levys.”
Cat suppressed the urge to shoot him a dirty look as they occupied the seats in front of the large desk. Across from them the picture window painted a spectacular tableau of downtown Buffalo, eight stories below. The neighboring skyscrapers weren't crammed into a claustrophobic cluster, but rather spread out to accommodate trees with fiery foliage of orange, red, copper and yellow leaves.
“Nice to meet you both. I’m very sorry to hear about your grandfather.”
Benji stared blankly at him before he blinked with recognition. “Oh, thank you. Grandfather was a wonderful man; it’s still hard to believe he’s gone. We shared so many interests—polo, water polo, Ralph Lauren Polo, and of course, yachting. In fact, I can still picture him out on the ocean. I like to imagine he’s out there now, still sneering at the smaller yachts through his monocle.”
Cat avoided eye contact. One look at Benji's dancing blue eyes and she’d blow it. “He did love the water,” she added.
Sam cleared his throat. “Yes, well, I’ll be honest, inheritance assets and estate management aren’t my specialty, but I’m told you asked for me directly. Can I ask how you heard about me?”
“I work for the Buffalo Soldiers and one of my colleagues gave me your name. Joel Faulk? I think he’s one of your clients?”
“He did?” Sam’s eyebrows met in the middle of his tan forehead.
Cat nibbled on her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, am I mistaken?”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just a little surprised Joel would recommend me.”
“He said you were the best.”
“Huh.” Sam’s scrutinizing forehead finally relaxed. “I guess I can’t complain about that. Surprising, though.”
Benji cleared his throat. “Mr. Masterhead, forgive me for being frank, but is there something we should know?”
“No, no, not at all.” He hesitated and looked back and forth between the two of them. “I shouldn’t say anything.”
Benji sat forward in his seat. “I’m sure you agree that an honest and open relationship is a necessity when looking for a good fit between clients and their prospective planners.”
Sam nodded. “The thing is, Joel’s a good kid but uh, well, he sunk some money—a lot of money—into a high risk investment. I told him it was a bad idea but he did it anyway.”
Cat shared a knowing glance with Benji. “We’re kind of high risk people, too.”
Benji nodded affirmatively. “Grandfather used to say the first billion is the hardest to make, but if invested, the second one is pretty easy.”
Cat had heard enough of Rich Grampy Pennybags. She kicked his foot, just hard enough to make a point but not so much that Sam would think it anything but accidental.
Sam was too busy chortling to notice. “Trust me, you’d have to be high for this risk.”
“What was it?”
“Oh, I really shouldn’t—”
“Mr. Masterhead, with all due respect, I’m not sure we can invest our money with you if we’re not on the same page.” Benji scooted closer to the desk and smiled, a charming half-smile with a dimple to boot. “Let us in on the joke.”
Cat blinked at Benji. This was a side of him sh
e’d never seen before … and she liked it. He could teach the McDaniels a thing or two about conning.
Sam’s eyes focused behind them and he stood up, walking around their chairs and shutting the door. “Let me get us some privacy.” He returned to his desk and pulled in his chair, folding his arms on top of the clean desktop. “Okay, I suppose it’s not really confidential and the story does make for sound business advice. You’ve heard that old adage about lawyers—that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client, right?”
“Abraham Lincoln,” Cat said.
“Hey, that’s right.”
She shrugged. “You don’t grow up in Illinois and go to Lincoln State University without learning a few things about the sixteenth president.”
“Well, I have the same motto as Abe when it comes to investors who fund their own inventions.”
Cat raised her palm to stop him. “Hold up. Joel invented something? Why didn’t I hear anything about this? I would’ve thought he would’ve wanted me to give him some publicity.”
Sam shook his head. “Only if you believe that even bad publicity is good publicity.”
“What’d he invent?” Benji asked.
Sam leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “People tend to come up with ideas that they can use themselves, right? Gerber baby food was created by a mother, the polygraph was invented by a cop and kitty litter came from a cat lover.”
Cat shrugged. “Okay.”
“Well, Joel, being a ballplayer, uses those flip up and down sunglasses during day games.”
“Flip shades, yeah.” She turned to Benji. “A lot of players don’t like the darkness of sunglasses when they’re on the field, but when they look up to try and catch a fly ball, the glare of the sun is too much and can make them miss. They don’t have time to put a pair of sunglasses on, so they wear these flip-up frames. When they’re running toward a fly ball, they can just flip the shades down.”
Sam nodded. “Exactly. Except Joel got it in his head that the second it takes to flip down the shades when you’re in pursuit of the ball is too long, so he hired somebody to design a prototype for the automatic and intuitive … Faulk Flips.” Sam shook his head sadly.
“Intuitive?” Benji asked.
“Automatic?” Cat cringed. She was beginning to see where this was going.
Sam was grinning now. “The glasses sense the wearer’s head tilting up and respond by mechanically lowering the shades.”
“He didn’t.” Cat buried her face in her hands. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It took three prototypes before the trigger wasn’t so sensitive that it was flipping the shades down every time the wearer stretched his neck or nodded at a sign. He thought once he got his teammates to wear them during games, they’d sell like hot cakes.”
“Since I’ve never heard of them, I’m guessing he couldn’t talk his friends into wearing them?”
“No, and a product has to be pretty bad if you can’t find one player to hock it."
Cat nodded in agreement. “There isn’t a player in the league that doesn’t have a brand name on his bats, gloves, shoes, and—in place of old fashioned eye black—black stickers under his eyes.”
“Any players he might’ve been able to guilt into wearing them were already in sponsor contracts for their eyewear and the guys he considered to be friends took one look at the hideous two pound sunglasses and laughed him out of the clubhouse.”
This was no shock to Cat, either. All year long it had been Damien, Ryan and Adam—they made The Three Stooges look like Rhodes Scholars. Joel didn’t have enough ass-itude to make the trio a quattro, yet he continued to waste his time trying to get their attention instead of befriending the twenty-one other players who didn’t act like bitchy queen bees.
“How come I’ve never heard any of this? I would’ve thought Joel would at least try to get the word out and salvage what he could from the investment.”
“It was too late and he was embarrassed. He’d sunk millions of his own money into the development and manufacturing.” He held up his index finger. “Despite my advice, mind you. I told him from the beginning that he should look for investors to take on the risk and I warned him to test the prototype before getting in too deep, but he didn’t listen. He moved quickly because he wanted them to hit the market for summer sales.”
“Wow.”
“So you can see why I would be surprised if anyone is taking financial advice from Joel Faulk, even if it is just a referral for a representative.”
Cat had heard enough. She made eye contact with Benji, wishing they’d thought to coordinate a signal or code word to abort mission. “I guess we’re not high risk people after all.”
Their footsteps echoed through the cold, dank parking garage as they walked toward Benji’s Focus.
He stopped just before reaching it, searching his pockets for the car keys. “He’s a nice guy. I almost felt bad about wasting his time.”
Cat shook his arm as if to knock the guilt right off of him. “Trust me, the Soldiers give him plenty of business. He’ll be just fine.”
“I’m sure he will.” He pulled out the keys and gave them a triumphant shake.
“I’ll tell you what, when we’re rolling in money, we’ll invest it with him.”
“Unless an opportunity to resurrect the Faulk Flips comes up in need of investors. Or rather philanthropists, because there ain’t no return on that money.”
She giggled as Benji opened the passenger door for her and scurried around to the driver’s side.
“Besides, we might’ve wasted an hour of Sam’s time but it was worth it. We found out exactly why Joel Faulk was begging Roger for an advance.”
“Yeah, we did. What do you think?”
“I think some people have more money than brain cells, but unless he was bribing Quinn and the guys with sunglasses, the truth blew my blackmail theory to hell. What do you think?”
“I think I need a pair of Faulk Flips. Any idea how I can get my hands on some?”
Cat laughed. “Actually, let me tell you a story. A kid I knew at LSU joined the Peace Corps our junior year and ended up in this tiny village in Mozambique. The Peace Corps had only entered the country in ’98 so there was a lot of work to be done. He’d keep us up to date on various projects. As a nursing major, he mainly worked inside a clinic, but occasionally he’d volunteer at the schools. Anyway, I got an email from him one day with a picture of two children. They were wearing t-shirts that said ‘2003 Chicago Cubs National League Champions.’ ” She tossed Benji a wry look as the car rolled through the parking garage gate. “The team infamously fell short of that title, but apparently not before merchandise was printed. Later on, he sent old pics of people in '1993 Philadelphia Phillies World Series Champions' hats and a '1989 Los Angeles Lakers NBA Champs' foam finger he found in a rec room—also titles that never happened. You see, the teams want to be able to sell the merchandise seconds after the deciding game ends, so they print an outcome of either scenario and then the losing team’s merch ends up going to overseas charities.”
“Sort of like ‘Dewey Defeats Truman,’ but on purpose.”
“Exactly.” She laughed. That infamous Chicago Tribune headline was exactly why she never uploaded her articles until the twenty-seventh out. You never knew what could happen.
“Glad they donate them instead of like, burning them.”
“So I can’t help but wonder if thousands of Faulk Flips are floating around an impoverished village somewhere in Africa.”
“I just wish if Joel had millions to throw away, he would’ve given it straight to the Peace Corps. I’m guessing they could’ve done a lot more with the money than a load of two pound sunglasses.”
“Either way, the merchandise is probably history, which means Joel probably doesn’t have the cash to pay off anybody. He must’ve been asking for that advance because he really needed it.”
“You said he did just buy a house.”
“I ca
n’t really picture him chucking someone off a balcony anyway, even drunk. On the other hand, I don’t think Adam Alvarez would need a drop to drop someone.”
“He does seem a little out there.”
“I wish I could just ask Quinn. He was there. He must know what happened.” She sighed. “This must be how Detective Kahn feels. No wonder he’s so annoyed with all of us.”
“Do you really think Quinn would be on the take? He’s a gambler, but I don’t believe he’s a swindler or a blackmailer.”
Cat turned her head toward the window and sighed. Benji’s naiveté never ceased to amaze her. Because his heart was so pure, he assumed everyone else’s was, too. It was adorable, but at times like these she was glad to have her street smart upbringing.
“If they made it worth his while, in a heartbeat. The thing is, he’s not an idiot and he knows how the world works. If Ryan was pushed off that balcony, Quinn could sell a first-person account to a tabloid for at least twenty-five thousand.”
“That’s what, like a pitch for Adam Alvarez? Seems to me he’d stand to lose a lot more if it came out that he threw the team’s ace pitcher from a balcony.”
“That still wouldn’t explain why Ryan would be in on it. He makes even more money than Adam.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” Benji pulled in front of the staff door of Soldiers Stadium and put the car in park.
She eyed the stadium warily.
“Besides, if the Soldiers don’t win tonight, I’ve got bigger problems than Joel’s bank account.”
“Are people still hassling you? I thought that stopped with Damien’s death.”
“It did, for the most part.” When she’d cruised the message boards, she’d found a few fans holding a grudge, but most had moved on to mourning the first baseman. “But if we’re knocked out of the playoffs it’s only a matter of time before they remember I’m the supposed catalyst.”