Billionaire Blend

by Cleo Coyle

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  “Anyway, I chatted up the waitress, found out Rogan called ahead to reserve the corner booth. Svetlana agreed to call me whenever that happened, and the stage was set.”

  “Stage?”

  “When Judd Rogan showed up that night, the tables around his were filled with people playing Pigeon Droppings on their phones.”

  “Who were these people?”

  “My staff. Me. Our friends. Even family. Once we hired actors. We put on that show three times before Rogan noticed. In the middle of the fourth act, he cornered Minnow, my chief programmer, and asked her what she was playing.”

  Eric paused. “Two days later, Rogan’s agent called to ask if the director could put my app in his next movie. Fake ID was a huge hit for Judd Rogan, and because of the exposure, Pigeon Droppings became the fastest-selling app in mobile gaming history. All it took was a little street theater . . .”

  “Street theater? More like a sting, It was trickery. You made Judd Rogan think he was buying into the hottest game app ever—”

  “And he did, ultimately. No harm, no foul, as Garth would say.”

  Garth again. It was beginning to sound like the Metis Man was a bad influence.

  “How long ago did you hire the Metis Man?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Clare, but I trust Garth. Look elsewhere.”

  Eric’s tone made me think that he had someone else in mind, but before I could press him, he groaned.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s been a long day and my pain meds are winding down.”

  “I’m not surprised. You’ve been pacing since you started telling me your story.”

  “My shoulder is killing me and I sent my butler to bed. Could you help me off with this damn jacket?”

  He turned and led me through a door, into a bedroom nearly as large as the sitting area. Eric lifted his arms while I unbuttoned the jacket and slipped it off, to reveal a crisp white linen shirt.

  As I hung the jacket, I spied a blue velvet gift box on Eric’s nightstand.

  “Oops. You weren’t supposed to see that until tomorrow. Might as well open it now.”

  “You have to stop giving me gifts—”

  “It’s not a gift. It’s test marketing. I expect a report.”

  Inside I found a pair of black gloves. The Italian leather was supple, and they were my size. “They’re lovely, and I thank you. But who test markets a pair of gloves?”

  “You’re the first. That’s the only pair in existence right now.”

  “It’s more than a pair of gloves, then?”

  “It’s a phone, Clare. Put on the left glove, place your thumb on your ear and speak into the little finger. Miss Phone will answer. It’s already programmed and ready to use.”

  While he spoke, Eric moved stiffly to the dresser and popped a few pills, chasing them with the last of his Armagnac.

  “Could you please help me with this shirt? I can’t bend my arm enough to work the buttons.”

  That was obvious, so I took over.

  Eric moved slowly as I pulled his arms free. Bare chested, I could see the bandages were gone, but an ugly scar remained.

  I was about to back away when Eric suddenly shifted into high gear. Before I could stop him, he crushed me in his arms and kissed me.

  “No, no, no . . . Eric, this can’t happen . . .” I pushed until he released me, stepped back, and wiped my smeared lipstick with the back of my hand.

  “You and I . . . we’re meant to be together.”

  “Eric,” I said evenly. “You know I love another man—”

  “But I love you, Clare!”

  “No, you don’t—”

  “I do, and it makes perfect sense. Garth says two things cause people to fall in love—intensity or propinquity. I fell for you when you looked into my eyes after that bomb went off and promised to take care of me. That was intensity—”

  “More like infatuation, a passing fancy. You’ve had too much to drink tonight, Eric, that’s all.”

  He seemed unsteady now that the painkillers were catching up to the Armagnac. Instead of arguing with me this time, he just shrugged, his energy drained.

  I swung into Mother Hen mode, pulling down the blankets and rolling him onto the bed, tugging off his shoes and socks. Eric didn’t fight me, and he didn’t get fresh—though I did draw the line at his request to help him off with his pants!

  When he was snugly tucked, I grabbed the gloves and moved to the door. “Get some rest, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “For me it was intensity, Clare. For you it will be propinquity . . .”

  I shook my head.

  “We just need to spend more time together, you’ll see!” he called before I left his room, went to mine, and locked the door behind me.

  Fifty-two

  BACK in my room, I tried to call Mike Quinn—using my THORN phone, not the gloves, which I shoved into my coat pocket. Unfortunately Miss Phone gave me major attitude.

  “Call cannot be completed as dialed,” the digital vixen declared. “Please try again later . . .”

  Funny how Matt Allegro had no trouble getting through five minutes later. The connection was lousy, but there was a good reason. Matt was calling on a satellite phone from Africa.

  “I talked to Eric this afternoon,” he said. “He’s planning to fly you to Saint-Tropez. No doubt his final destination is a topless beach. Well, forget it, Clare. At this time of year it’s cold and rainy. The weather’s much warmer here in Uganda.”

  “Uganda!”

  “You sold me on helping coffee farmers. Time to deliver. Get Eric down here.”

  “How?!”

  “Easy. He’ll go wherever you go, and I plan to take him places baby billionaires never go. This will not be ‘glamping.’ I’ll e-mail you a list of things you should bring, and I’ll tell you right now don’t skimp on the aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, insect repellent—with DEET—and mosquito netting. Call me when you touch down in Tororo.”

  *

  MATT had no trouble finding us at Tororo Airport—there was only one runway, and it was unpaved.

  The town was unimpressive, too, resembling a suburban strip mall surrounded by dirt roads instead of concrete. Though areas of the Tororo District boasted panoramic views of Uganda’s Mount Elgon, it took us four grueling hours to drive to the coffee growing region in the foothills.

  During the long, bumpy ride, Matt told Eric that 90 percent of Uganda’s coffee output was Robusta, easy to cultivate, but not prized due to its high acidity and bitterness.

  “The small amount of Arabica produced is not held in high regard, either,” Matt explained. “Farming standards are poor, and the beans aren’t always picked at the optimum time, so the end product contains rotten cherries and underdeveloped beans. But what’s really hurting quality and production is dry processing.”

  Matt told Eric that sun drying beans was labor intensive, because the beans have to be raked constantly, or they will develop molds that give the finished cup a metallic taste. Water processing was more efficient, but more expensive, too, requiring an investment the impoverished farmers didn’t have.

  The obvious question occurred to Eric. “If Ugandan coffees are unspectacular, why are we here?”

  “Because on one small family farm in the foothills, something remarkable happened.”

  We finally arrived at a yellow wooden house clinging to the side of a hill, where Matt introduced us to the family matriarch. A cheerful woman with deep wrinkles, she served us roasted ground nuts—good old-fashioned peanuts, an important source of protein in this part of the world—along with boil-brewed cups of pan-roasted coffee.

  Eric smacked his lips. “This coffee tastes like vanilla! Is it flavored?”

  “Bite your tongue,” my ex replied.

  Matt explained that vanilla beans were Uganda’s second biggest cash crop, and there were vanilla fields in the hills around us. Matt wasn’t sure if it
was cross-pollination or absorption of chemical properties through the roots, but the result of their proximity was a coffee with pronounced and pleasing vanilla notes.

  After a lunch of ebinyebwa (a savory peanut and chicken stew that’s native to the region), we toured the coffee fields and viewed the crude wooden drying platform. An ancient woman supervised a dozen children of various ages, who used long wooden poles to rake the coffee cherries drying in the sun.

  “Where are all the men?” Eric asked.

  “Most have jobs in the city,” Matt replied. “Needless to say, they can’t commute from Tororo so they’re only home a few days each month. Their absence doesn’t impact coffee production. In Uganda women and children do the farming.”

  “But these kids should be in school.”

  “There’s a school down in the valley. But like I said, dry processing is labor intensive so they’re needed here.”

  Eric nodded. “I propose we buy this season’s harvest—the entire lot—at a fair market price. On top of that, I’ll throw in a washing station. That way these kids can get an education.”

  “I’ll make the deal,” said Matt, hiding his delight.

  I caught Matt’s eye and smiled.

  Good job, Allegro . . .

  *

  I’D been seat hopping during the entire flight to Thailand, trying to avoid sitting beside Eric, who couldn’t keep his hands off me, much to Matt’s amusement.

  Eric continued the chase for hours, until he finally got bored and talked shop again. “What do you know about that coffee they mentioned in the movie Bucket List? Cat poop coffee, they called it.”

  “You’re referring to Kopi Luwak,” Matt said, frowning. “And it’s an Asian palm civet, not a cat.”

  “You don’t sound impressed.”

  “I don’t want to pooh-pooh the whole Kopi Luwak phenomena, but there’s a lot of fraud out there,” Matt said. “Twenty years ago it was bogus Jamaican Blue Mountain and Kona. Today it’s phony Kopi Luwak.”

  Matt explained that traditional methods were simple. Civets ate the largest, choicest coffee cherries for their juicy pulp. The bean went through the animal’s digestive tract, where it fermented. Enzymes seeped into the beans, making the coffee milder, smoother, less acidic. The civets’ excrement was then collected, the beans retrieved and roasted.

  Bad changes came after Kopi Luwak was “discovered” in the 1980s, when old methods were replaced by intensive farming. Today, civets are fed a diet of coffee cherries and not much else, so they’re far less discriminating and eat all the fruit, not just the choice ones. The natural selection process that occurred in the wild is bypassed, and so is quality.

  “On top of that, fifty times more Kopi Luwak is sold than is actually produced, so most of the stuff available commercially is counterfeit,” Matt concluded. “But if you’re still interested in a not-so-crappy crap coffee, I say we go bigger. Much, much bigger.”

  Fifty-three

  TWELVE hours later we arrived at an elephant refuge in the lush green hills of Northern Thailand. The sun blazed hot, but a jasmine-laced breeze off a nearby creek cooled the air.

  Around a wicker table under a tall shade tree, we cupped Black Ivory while two dozen Thai elephants munched coffee cherries on the other side of a flimsy wooden fence.

  “This stuff is preternatural,” Eric gushed. “The smoothest coffee I ever drank. It’s earthy, yet floral. And there are flavor notes I’ve never tasted . . .”

  Matt informed us that the cup we’d just consumed would cost fifty U.S. dollars, and the roasted beans were priced at over five hundred dollars a pound.

  “At the moment, Black Ivory’s only available in high-priced resorts in Thailand, the Maldives, and in Abu Dhabi.”

  Cultivated on the same principles as Kopi Luwak, Black Ivory was considered to be superior because the beans passed through the elephant’s digestive system at a slower rate, fermenting up to seventy hours. The enzymes broke down the coffee protein, making the finished cup sweeter and less acidic. Other ingredients in the elephant’s stomach added interesting and unique flavor notes.

  Black Ivory was prohibitively expensive because it took seventy-two pounds of raw coffee cherries to recover just two pounds of intact, digested beans. But we all agreed the final result was worth it.

  “But the best part of all is that these elephants are all rescue animals,” Matt said. “Some of the profit from the sale of Black Ivory is used to protect at-risk elephants in captivity and in the wild. They’d love to expand this herd, save more at-risk elephants, and double the production capacity, but right now funds are scarce.”

  “Do they take donations?” Eric asked. “I’d sure love to help . . .”

  *

  OUR next trip took us from the elephant refuge to Thailand’s Golden Triangle, where poppies were grown to make opium. In that area notorious for narco-trafficking and gang wars, a new kind of coffee trade—and a new kind of coffee trader—were flourishing.

  Matt brought us to a tribe in the mountains who had taken complete control of their coffee business. They cultivated the fields, reaped the harvest, accepted orders by satellite phone or over the Internet. They roasted the coffee in a small facility on top of the mountain where it was picked, sealed the finished beans in valve-bags, and shipped them all over Asia.

  It was the exact opposite of conditions in Uganda, where every step in the coffee production process was fraught with difficulties, and the middleman took most of the profit.

  “The difference is infrastructure,” Matt said. “Uganda’s is primitive, here it’s practically state-of-the-art. As communication grids improve across the world’s coffee belt, this operation in Thailand could become the model for twenty-first-century coffee production.”

  *

  AFTER stops in Jakarta and Hawaii, we moved to Central America, where we sampled cups from the Cinturón de Oro, the “Golden Belt” of El Salvador’s coffee growing industry. There we discovered a remarkable bean growing on the slopes of the Ilamatepec volcano.

  The Caribbean was next, with short stays in Haiti, and bordering Jamaica. Our final stop in this region was Costa Gravas.

  Once racked by political strife that halted the nation’s coffee production, the island country was now at peace, but still backward, even by the region’s low standards.

  Primitive or not, Costa Gravas was also one of the most beautiful islands in the blue-watered Caribbean. Eric was immediately smitten by this “paradise.”

  After a long hike, we stood on a promontory overlooking the ocean. Eric managed to slip his arm around my shoulders while I concentrated on the view.

  “A man could set up an amazing life here, away from it all . . . if he had someone to share it with . . .”

  Matt couldn’t hide his “I told you so” grin.

  I shrugged off Eric’s arm and faced him. “This is hardly paradise. There’s no Internet, and I doubt the average citizen ever saw a personal computer or a smartphone.”

  “It wouldn’t take much to fix that,” Matt added. “Thanks to satellite communications, Costa Gravas has cell phone access. Adding an Internet component shouldn’t be too hard, and it would also be a necessary step before resuming the coffee trade.”

  I discovered how well the phones worked when Tucker interrupted me with a call.

  “Hate to ruin your vacation, but preparations for this Appland party are getting brutal. You do remember we’re scheduled to cater it?”

  “Of course, Tuck. How can I help?”

  “First of all, do you want guests to dip the Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies in your homemade Chocolate Reese’s Nutella, or your Almond Joy Nutella?”

  “Both.”

  Tuck sighed. “And what in the whole wide world are Nuts on Horseback?”

  “It’s my own invention. You’ve heard of Angels on Horseback, right? It’s just oysters wrapped in bacon. Devils on Horseback replaces the oysters with dried fruit. Well, for Nuts on Horseback we’re going to make bit
e-sized pieces of butternut squash, wrap them in bacon, and roast them with maple syrup.”

  “Oh, yum! Very tasty! Last question now . . . What in the world is Paleo Pizza?”

  “No grains. It has a crust made of cauliflower.”

  “I don’t live on that planet, CC. You better get back here and help us with this stuff.”

  I silently concurred. I wanted to attend that party because it was my best chance to get to know—and possibly interrogate—some of the employees in Eric’s mobile gaming division.

  “Tour’s over,” I announced when I hung up. “I have to get back to NYC.”

  Matt protested. “But what about South America?”

  “We’ll do it later,” Eric replied. “I have business in Silicon Valley this week.”

  Eric shook Matt’s hand. “It was a great coffee tour, Allegro, but digital duty calls.”

  Fifty-four

  MY baristas were delighted that I was back. Nancy, Tuck, and Esther crowded around me as I handed out little souvenirs I bought for everyone. (While I was sure they were glad to see me, I had a sneaking suspicion they were so flummoxed by some of my catering instructions that they were simply relieved to have me take over.)

  After fielding a few dozen questions, I headed upstairs to my second-floor office. When I opened the door, I was bowled over by a sickly sweet smell rising from a vase of red and white roses—dead roses.

  I looked for a note while I called Tuck downstairs for answers.

  “The flowers came while you were in Africa,” Tuck explained. “Esther did what she could. She took good care of your kitties, and changed the water in the flower vase daily. But you were gone so long there was no hope of preserving them.”

  I finally located the note and read it.

  “The flowers are from Mike, but he only wrote one line: ‘Roses white and red are best.’ Why does that sound familiar?”

  “It’s from a Rudyard Kipling poem,” Tuck replied. “I can look it up if you want.”