The Vulture Fund

by Stephen W. Frey

  “The base pricing on any amounts outstanding will be Chase’s cost of funds plus three percent.” Mace’s voice was calm. “For any amounts committed to but not outstanding, the banks will receive seventy-five basis points—three-quarters of one percent. And if, as you say, Chase commits to underwrite a billion dollars, you will receive an up-front fee of two percent.”

  Schuler raised both eyebrows. “That’s pretty rich.”

  “Yes, but we think you deserve it. And we want to get this done fast.” Mace said the words firmly. Webster had already committed to the bank pricing two nights ago. In fact he had suggested it, to Mace’s shock. Usually Webster didn’t like to pay banks much of anything.

  The waiter approached the table, pad in hand. “May I take your orders?”

  Mace glanced at his watch. It was just after eight. “I’m afraid not, my good man,” he said as he stood. He shook Schuler’s hand. “I’m sorry, John, but Leeny and I have to catch a plane for New Orleans. You understand.”

  “Of course.” Schuler rose from his seat as Leeny stood. He was obviously disappointed as he glanced at Leeny, wishing now that he hadn’t been so arrogant as to keep them waiting. “I’m very sorry I was late. I’m so rude,” he said.

  Leeny smiled as she took Schuler’s hand. “Not to worry. I get the feeling we’ll have plenty of time to find out more about each other in the near future. I’m looking forward to working with you, John.”

  Schuler hesitated for a moment. “Yes, as I am with you.” Schuler glanced at Mace. He had fallen into the web, and now there was no escape. Leeny might as well have had loan papers for Schuler to sign on the spot.

  Mace turned to the waiter and pressed a crisp hundred-dollar bill into the young man’s hand. “Please bring our friend whatever he would like for breakfast. And could you bring him the New York Times while he waits? He’s probably already read the Journal.”

  Schuler nodded and laughed. “Very perceptive, Mr. McLain.”

  “I’ll be in touch tomorrow, John.” Leeny waved as she and Mace headed for the door. “We need your commitment as soon as possible.”

  Schuler nodded again vigorously. “I’ll start working on it as soon as I get back to the bank. By the time you land in New Orleans there will be an entire team put together to work on the deal.” He watched longingly as they moved away from the table.

  “Great,” she called back over her shoulder.

  As they reached the maître d’s stand, Mace leaned toward Leeny. “They should call you the barracuda.”

  Leeny touched Mace’s elbow lightly and laughed. “They do.” But she wasn’t laughing inside. Schuler disgusted her, almost as much as she disgusted herself for agreeing to be party to this. He was a horrible little man. But Webster had made himself very clear: do what has to be done. She turned away from Mace, and her expression soured.

  * * *

  —

  Nothing Mace could have said would have prepared Leeny for Bobby Maxwell. He was a study in contrasts. Wild contrasts. His fire engine red hair stretched in a neat ponytail down the back of his smartly cut Armani suit jacket to a spot in the middle of his shoulder blades. His Sierra Club membership hung on his office wall next to a neatly framed picture of himself holding open the mouth of a huge alligator he had just shot somewhere deep in the Louisiana bayou. The small Confederate flag stood on one corner of his desk, and a picture of him shaking hands with leaders of the local NAACP chapter on the other. And Leeny was certain that somewhere sprinkled in his deep southern accent she could hear a harsh Brooklyn er every few moments.

  “You want to do what, Mace?” Maxwell’s voice was terribly loud, even in normal conversation.

  Mace stood before the huge window of Maxwell’s grand office, fifty floors above the streets of the Crescent City, staring out at the Mississippi River stretching southward to the Gulf of Mexico in the fading light of the early evening. “I want to buy your Lexington Avenue property in Manhattan for a hundred million dollars. The office building at the corner of Lex and Forty-seventh Street.”

  “Make me laugh again, Mace McLain. Say that one more time. Come on, please. It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed really hard, a long time since I’ve heard a good joke. One as good as that anyway.”

  Mace turned away from the window and toward Maxwell. His voice was even. “I’m serious, Bobby, a hundred million.”

  Maxwell slapped his knee and screamed with delight. “And I thought you were a serious man, Mace.” Suddenly he swung his snakeskin boots from the desktop to the floor, leaned over the desk, picked up a World War II grenade standing next to his Confederate flag, and flung it against the far wall.

  Leeny, who had been eyeing the grenade carefully since entering the office, hunched over quickly as the weapon struck the paneling of the far wall with a sharp crack. Leeny’s sudden movement caused her eyeglasses to fall to the thick shag carpet.

  “You thought that was real, didn’t you, sweetheart?” Maxwell asked. “She thought it was real, Mace.” Maxwell laughed again loudly as Leeny bent over to pick up the glasses.

  But Mace wasn’t laughing. He was frustrated with the conversation. They had discussed each of Maxwell’s Manhattan properties, except Trump Tower, and Maxwell had howled at the offering price Mace had mentioned for each property, as Mace had suspected Maxwell would. The prices were low, in some cases just above the value of the mortgage Maxwell had on the property. But the offering prices were Webster’s. Mace had tried to convince Webster that Maxwell wouldn’t be interested, but Webster hadn’t cared. Let Maxwell laugh, the old man had said. It will be bluster. Because when the crash hits, Maxwell won’t be laughing anymore. That attitude was fine for Webster, who could sit in his ivory tower in Manhattan, worth three hundred million dollars, and still live like a king for the rest of his life even if the crash never hit and Broadway Ventures wasn’t successful.

  It was different for Mace. If the fund failed, Mace would have to return to the advisory side of the financial services business. And his contacts, people like Bobby Maxwell, might not take him seriously anymore.

  Maxwell shook his head. “Oh, Mace, you know I love you for that Trump Tower deal. I really do. And I want to repay you for it, over and above the fee I already gave you. But I’ve got a reputation as a tough negotiator to uphold.”

  Suddenly Mace picked up his suit coat from the table in front of the window and moved to Maxwell’s desk. “I’m sorry to have troubled you today, Bobby.” Mace turned to Leeny. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Leeny stood. She needed no urging to leave this office.

  “Aw, c’mon, Mace. Don’t be upset with me. Stay awhile longer. Look, come up twenty million on the Lexington Avenue property and I’ll accept. It’d still be a lowball offer, but I’ll be a sweetheart. ’Cause I love you.” Maxwell rose from his reclining leather desk chair. “Tell you what, I’ll treat you both to dinner. First I’ll drive you out to my place in the swamp, and we can show missy here how to hunt alligators at night with a flashlight.” Maxwell gestured toward Leeny. “You ever hunted gators?”

  Leeny shook her head quickly, then crossed her arms over her chest instinctively.

  “It’s a lot of fun. I’m telling you. When we’re done hunting gators, we’ll have the help grill us up some food. After that you and I can take a little walk. There’ll be a nice moon out tonight, so there won’t be a problem seeing the snakes. We’ll leave Mace behind at the mansion while we go down by the water. At that point maybe I’ll even accept just a fifteen-million-dollar increase on Lexington Avenue.”

  Mace stepped in front of Leeny. “Thanks, Bobby, but we’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “Damn.” Maxwell scratched his head, trying to think of a way to keep Leeny around for the evening.

  Mace grabbed Leeny’s hand and pulled her toward the door. Several moments later the elevator door closed, and they were alone in the ca
r as it began to descend.

  Leeny shook her head and laughed. “That’s a hillbilly if I ever saw one.”

  “Don’t kid yourself.” Mace watched the numbers over the doors light up as the car sped downward. “He’s worth almost a billion dollars.”

  “What?” Leeny looked at Mace incredulously.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mace imitated Maxwell for a moment. “Funny thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Leeny asked.

  “If real estate values declined about ten percent, he’d be broke. Bankrupt. Out of business.” Mace shook his head. “But now he’s the king. It’s the power of leverage, Leeny. It’s what makes this country great. If a nobody like Bobby Maxwell can just convince a bank to make him a loan, he can become a billionaire overnight.” As he finished speaking, the doors of the elevators opened to the massive lobby of the Maxwell Building, the tallest skyscraper in New Orleans.

  In just twenty minutes Mace and Leeny were sitting in a table at the rear of Blue Note Heaven, a popular French Quarter jazz club. Mace rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt as he watched the band, then picked up the cold glass of beer, touched it to Leeny’s, and drank. It tasted so good. After a few moments he put the glass down and began to attack the heaping plate of steamed spiced shrimp that lay before him. He had not eaten since consuming a small plate of fresh fruit on the plane this morning, and suddenly he realized that he was famished.

  “Hey, save a little for the rest of us, Mr. McLain.”

  “Sorry, Leeny.” Mace dropped the shell and legs of another shrimp into the waste bowl at one corner of the table, dipped the orange and white meat into a smaller bowl of hot sauce, popped the creature in his mouth, then pushed the plate toward Leeny. “I’m starving.”

  “That’s obvious.” Leeny picked up a shrimp and began to peel it. “It’s nice down here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He wiped his hands with a napkin. “So you haven’t told me yet why you left your job at LeClair and Foster. You must have been earning quite a bit of money. And in San Francisco no less.”

  Leeny sighed. “Are you going to make me dredge up bad memories?”

  “Didn’t get along with the partners, huh?”

  “It had nothing to do with the firm. I was enjoying my job very much.”

  Mace smiled at her. “Then it must have been a significant other problem.”

  “Oh, you checked up on me, did you?” She raised her eyebrows at him. The divorce had nothing to do with anything, but if he wanted to think that it was a factor, then fine, she would play along.

  “Wouldn’t you expect me to? You checked me out. I mean, with the technology available today it’s kind of stupid not to take the five minutes and learn everything you can about someone.” Mace paused. He wanted to know more about the reason for her departure, and she was not being forthcoming at all. Still, there was no reason to push her and ruin what was becoming a very enjoyable evening. “Say, what do you look like without your glasses on?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Her face broke into a sexy grin.

  “Come on, take them off.” Mace took another sip of Dixie beer.

  “I take my glasses off for only one reason, Mace.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t you call up my ex-husband and ask him?” she asked calmly.

  “Oh, I get it.” He laughed, then let out a long breath.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Mace shook his head. “We wasted a whole day coming down here. Maxwell isn’t going to sell, not at our prices. We’ve got to convince Webster to come up about ten percent.”

  “Forget about it for now,” she said quickly. “Have some fun.”

  Mace glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time for us to get out to the air—”

  “No way.” Leeny grabbed Mace’s wrist and stood up. “Come on!” The band had just broken into a fast song with a driving bass beat, and the dance floor of the small club was fast filling with half-drunk revelers.

  “No, I’m a terrible dancer,” Mace yelled back as the music became louder. “Really.”

  “Come with me!” Leeny wasn’t going to take no for an answer. That was clear from her expression.

  Mace grabbed the mug of beer on the small table, downed its remaining contents, then allowed himself to be pulled into the mass of gyrating bodies. He was not one to make a spectacle of himself, so he needed as much alcohol in his body as possible.

  For the next half hour he spun Leeny from one end of the floor to the other during the faster songs and felt her move seductively against him to the slower ones. Finally, when neither could take any more, they moved back to their table and collapsed into their seats.

  “Oh.” Leeny touched her chest as she picked up the gin and tonic glass in which the ice cubes had melted to tiny crystals. “And you said you weren’t much of a dancer. I should have known. After all, you were an athlete in college.”

  Mace smiled. She was sexy, smart, and one heck of a dance partner. He kept trying to tell himself that it wasn’t a good idea to get close to someone he worked so intimately with, that he shouldn’t be attracted to her. But not being attracted to her was becoming more difficult by the minute.

  * * *

  —

  Leeny pulled him into the hotel room, put her hands behind his neck, and kissed him deeply. Mace did not resist. Her mouth tasted wonderful, wet and warm. She nuzzled his neck, began to unbutton his shirt. “See.” She was breathing hard as she worked. “I told you it would be a good idea to stay the night.” She pulled his shirt apart and slid her hands over his chest as she kissed his neck.

  Mace leaned back against the wall as Leeny grabbed his shoulders. God, it felt so good. Suddenly he picked her up by the waist and rotated her slowly so that she was suspended in the air against the wall, her face at his. She pulled her skirt up to her thighs so that she could wrap her legs around his body, biting his ear gently as he supported her. “Jesus, it isn’t any effort at all for you to keep me up here, is it?” She could feel the power in his torso.

  “No.” He stopped and stared at her in the light streaming in from the door, still slightly ajar. “You’re like a feather.” She was too. She seemed to weigh nothing.

  “Mmm. Don’t stop what you were doing to me. Keep going.” Again she kissed him, this time sliding her right hand down his body to the belt buckle of his pants.

  But Mace continued to stare at her in the dim light. This wasn’t what should be happening. “Stop.” He allowed her feet to slip to the floor.

  “What? Stop what?”

  “This. We need to stop what we are doing.” Mace breathed deeply. It took every ounce of willpower in his body to say the words.

  “No, I won’t stop.” She began to sink to her knees in front of him, but he caught her by the arms and gently pulled her back to her feet. He was still feeling the alcohol. It would be so easy to let her do what she wanted to do, what he wanted her to do. But they had to work together, and he knew that most of the time men and women did not work together effectively once they were involved. “It’s not that I don’t find you attractive.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” She touched his cheek gently.

  “We have to work together. I think that might become difficult. We’d try not to let it affect us, but at some point it would end up becoming a real problem.”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem for me,” she whispered.

  Mace laughed softly. “No, it probably wouldn’t. You seem to have the ability to handle anything in stride. So let’s blame it on me.”

  “One night. No more after that. I promise. And I would never mention it again.”

  He breathed deeply again. She was making this so difficult.

  Leeny rubbed his chest gently with the back of her hand as she stared up at him. Then she took a slow step
backward toward the large bed and began to undress, never allowing her eyes to leave his. Mace watched her seductively remove each article of her clothing, his eyes riveted to every silky stretch of skin that became exposed as the skirt, blouse, and lingerie dropped from her body. Finally she stood before him naked, her hands resting on her upper thighs as she smiled coolly at him. Her fingertips moved almost imperceptibly against her skin as he stared, and then her back stiffened and her eyelids closed for a moment, as if she were deriving an immense amount of physical pleasure just from the slight movement of her fingernails against her thighs.

  Leeny slowly moved toward him. She placed her hand on his shoulder while she removed her clear-framed glasses and placed them on the bureau. “As you probably guessed, this is the one thing I take my glasses off for,” she said demurely. She took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips, sucking his lower lip gently into her mouth for a moment. He could feel her breasts rub against him as she kissed him. How could he resist this?

  “I can’t wait any longer, Mace. With or without you, something’s got to happen,” she said in a low voice. With that she moved away from him, crawled slowly onto the bed, then turned and lay on her back facing him.

  Mace watched as she ran one hand slowly through her hair and allowed the other to move sensually over her breasts and then down past her stomach. It was too much for him. He could resist no longer.

  In seconds he had stripped off his clothes and moved onto the bed with her. They kissed tenderly for several moments, and then she moved beneath him. She did not want to wait any longer. Her hand closed about him and gently tugged until he was poised above her.