“Now.”
“Why the urgency?”
“The seller’s about to declare bankruptcy. If you think American courts are slow, you should see them in the Philippines. If the seller files, we lose our chance. I’m not talking about saving hundreds of kids. I’m talking thousands.”
“How’d you raise the money in the first place?” I asked, switching gears.
Claire glanced at her watch and then at me. I didn’t understand the signal. There was no time constraint, to my knowledge.
The reverend smiled. “Palmer asked the same thing. We target Catholics in the United States through different websites focusing on specific cities. New York, Los Angeles, San Diego—to name a few.”
“No mention of your activities in the Philippines, right?”
“Too risky.”
“I’d love to see your websites.”
“Can we break for a few minutes?” Claire spoke in her Southern-syrup CNN voice. Something was eating at her. But I had no idea what.
Father Ricardo checked his watch, twisting his wrist to expose it from underneath his white cuff. “I had hoped to wrap this up.”
“Just fifteen minutes,” soothed Claire. “JoJo, Grove, and I need to talk among ourselves.”
We do?
“Well, I’d love coffee and a doughnut,” he said.
“I’ll order something from the café across the street,” offered JoJo. “You can use my office while you’re waiting.”
“Don’t bother. I need the walk. So does your dog.”
“Charge it to the Palmetto Foundation,” JoJo said, passing Holly to the priest. “We have an account there.”
“Do you have a leash?”
Holly looked happy. I had never seen the dachshund snuggle up to anyone but JoJo.
“On the hook next to the door.”
When I turned around and saw Claire, she was staring daggers at me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE PALMETTO FOUNDATION
“What are you doing?” Claire was pissed.
I had no idea why. “What do you mean?”
“Father Ricardo. I don’t get the inquisition.”
“We’re fiduciaries. It’s our job to investigate grant recipients.”
“I’ve been to Manila.” Claire leaned forward. “I’ve seen the kids for myself.”
“What about the safe houses?”
“And blow their cover—are you kidding? We’ve been working with the Catholic Fund for two years. What more do you want?”
“Your dad’s money isn’t here yet. Sixty-five million is almost half of our total assets.”
Claire folded her arms, the right hook of nonverbal communication. “It’s the Catholic Fund’s money.”
“It was.”
“They’re paying us six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to stay invisible. The last time I checked, we have competitors and they have options. Why are you being such a hard-ass?”
Claire had a point. But I was still right to exercise caution and watch the details. “I’m sure your dad described our due diligence to Father Ricardo.”
“The Palmetto Foundation agreed to fund his cause a long time ago.”
“Did you sign something?”
Our exchange resembled a tennis match. JoJo watched in silence, her head turning back and forth with each volley.
“Dad did it on a handshake,” replied Claire.
“I don’t see the problem with my questions.”
“You’re wasting Father Ricardo’s time.”
“Palmer’s word was his bond,” added JoJo.
“I wasn’t here.”
“We still need to honor his verbal commitments,” Claire pressed. “It’s good business.”
“How did you meet Father Ricardo anyway?”
“Referral from one of my husband’s friends.” JoJo touched Claire’s forearm and leaned toward me, the two united in their opposition. “But the Catholic Fund is Claire’s baby. She built the relationship from scratch.”
Claire flashed a wan smile at her stepmother.
I looked at Claire. I looked at JoJo. The voting math was clear. “Can’t I have one week to study the organization?”
“No,” insisted Claire.
“You heard Father Ricardo. He needs the money.” JoJo squeezed my hand. The gesture filled my head with images of Eduardo and the other orphans.
“So if we vote right now, the Palmetto Foundation will wire the funds?”
The two women checked each other. Then they looked at me, nodding their heads in unison.
“Fine, I quit. I won’t be bullied into a decision I don’t understand.” I regretted my words at once. The petulant-little-boy crap worked at SKC, but it could destroy my lifelong relationship with the Kincaids.
Fortunately, Claire softened. “Come on, Grove. We need you.”
“It’s the kids.” JoJo reached across the table for my hand again, trying to defuse our tension. “Their faces. Their wounds. They’re tearing us up inside. And Palmer’s gone.”
She was right. I had joined the board as a swing vote, and right now there was no deadlock. Far from it. Frick and Frack were on the same page. “I’d feel more comfortable doing my homework on the Catholic Fund.”
Claire unfolded her arms and reverted back to Madam Ambassador. “We’ve got our fees and the future of this relationship to consider, Grove.”
JoJo smiled her assent.
“I’m okay if we wire twenty-five million now and the balance in a week.”
“Father Ricardo will hate the delay,” JoJo objected.
“Twenty-five million goes a long way toward keeping a project on track,” argued Claire.
“We’re going back on my husband’s word. How do we explain that?”
“Blame it on me. This is my first meeting as a trustee. And this is our first important decision since Palmer’s death. A priest, of all people, will understand our need to regroup.”
“Father Ricardo won’t like it.” This time it was JoJo who folded her arms across her chest.
“We need to decide.” Claire spoke with the conviction of a veteran horse trader. And it dawned on me that the Daisy Buchanan of my youth was taking charge of her father’s empire.
* * *
I insisted on playing bad cop. It was my fault, after all, we weren’t wiring the full $65 million. Father Ricardo would be ticked off. I had no doubt.
“How was the doughnut?” Claire smiled brightly, relaxed, confident, ambassadorial. She was sitting next to the priest.
“We both enjoyed it.” Father Ricardo passed Holly back to JoJo. Then he looked at me and confirmed my childhood conviction that all men of the cloth come with a sixth sense. “What’s the problem?”
“I need time to review your proposal.”
He said nothing at first. He just stared at me with the glacier face that priests reserve for confession. When you grow up Catholic, it’s really uncomfortable to be sitting across the table from a guy who’s hot under the clerical collar. He finally asked, “How much time?”
“One week.”
“We need our money now. The seller will declare bankruptcy, and then all bets are off.”
“We’ll send twenty-five million today. That will buy your seller time with his creditors.”
Father Ricardo turned to Claire. “You agreed to this?”
“Yes.” She nodded, but her eyes blinked.
“We had a deal, Claire.”
“We still do,” I intervened, trying to regain control of the conversation.
“Palmer said the money would be available whenever we need it.”
“One week, Father.”
“It’s our money, Grove. You’re going back on my handshake with Palmer.”
“I don’t see why seven days are a problem.”
“And I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish.”
“If it were my decision, we wouldn’t wire any money until I finished my due diligence.” There it was, me throwing myself under the bus. I
glanced at Claire and JoJo, acknowledging Father Ricardo’s allies on the board, and added, “But given our relationship with the Catholic Fund, I’m okay with twenty-five now.”
“Anything can happen in a week. We’ve been waiting too long for me to lose this property now. And frankly, it troubles me your organization doesn’t have the integrity to stand behind its word. This would never happen with Palmer at the helm.”
“No, I suppose not,” admitted JoJo, sitting apart from all of us. The reverend’s rebuke was a bitter pill for her to swallow.
“We needed a partner.” Father Ricardo addressed Claire, laying the guilt trip on her. “We chose your organization for its stability. Now I realize we were mistaken. And ordinarily, I can work through mistakes. Everybody blows it at one time or another, even priests. But it’s the kids who are suffering. How can you be so indifferent?”
I almost caved, Eduardo’s photo still on the wall. “How much does the property cost anyway?”
“Immaterial. It’s the principle. Where I come from, a man’s word counts for something.” Tension growing, Father Ricardo rubbed his collar to emphasize the point.
It was Claire who emerged from the shell of her father, Claire who offered a solution à la Madam Ambassador. “Maybe there’s a way to make the week more comfortable.”
“Wire us sixty-five million,” Father Ricardo snapped. “That’ll make us comfortable.”
“Why not seventy?” Claire countered.
Three heads snapped around, Father Ricardo’s, JoJo’s, mine.
“What do you mean?” asked the priest.
“We’ll stick to the schedule,” she said. “Twenty-five today, forty in a week, and five thereafter. Call it our apology for making you wait.”
For a moment, Father Ricardo considered her words. He looked at all three of us before addressing Claire: “We could use ten.”
“We’re not that sorry,” Claire said, laughing, leaning forward, grasping both his hands. “No harm, no foul?”
“It’s a fine solution,” urged JoJo. “We can fund the last five when Palmer’s bequest comes into the foundation. He’d be thrilled.”
“How about waiving your fee?” Father Ricardo smiled. Less money for us meant more money to his mission. He was a shrewd, no-nonsense negotiator.
So was Claire. “No.”
Most of the tension had left the room. But no one was feeling victorious, least of all me. We sat in an awkward silence, not sure what to say. After a while, I tried to bring closure to our conversation. “Well, I know what Palmer would say.”
The others looked at me, waiting for a punch line.
I wasn’t trying to be funny—which is my usual crutch in these situations. Humor, I’ve learned through the years, never solves the problem. It just masks the hard feelings for a while. It was more effective to say something wise for all parties to consider:
“‘A good deal is where everybody leaves—’”
“‘The table unhappy,’” Claire interrupted, finishing Palmer’s words, friendly with me, again.
“Well, I’m unhappy.” Father Ricardo held his mouth between his thumb and forefinger.
That’s how the meeting ended. That’s how our new board made its first decision. And in my view, we ensured that nothing would ever be the same among the three trustees again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
UNION STATION
WEDNESDAY
Torres grabbed a coffee and a buttered roll. She also snagged The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. She preferred the Times to the other publications. Didn’t matter. Over the next two hours and forty-six minutes, she would read all three cover to cover.
The agent glanced at her watch. She had five minutes to catch the six A.M. Acela Express from D.C. to New York City. She picked up her pace, annoyed by a helter-skelter lifestyle that was growing old in a hurry. This morning, there had hardly been enough time to kiss her babies good-bye.
All this for what?
Murph and the D.C. police had turned up nothing new on Father Michael Rossi. The medical examiner confirmed that asphyxiation was the cause of death. His finding was hardly a revelation.
Fingerprints produced only one hit in the federal databanks. One of Sacred Heart’s churchgoers started a bar fight twenty years ago in college. There was nothing, however, to link the parishioner to Moreno.
Nor was there anything to suggest a motive for Father Mike’s brutal death. Sacred Heart’s clergy reported no suspicious activity, and members of the staff were distraught.
“Father Mike was a saint.”
“We all miss him.”
“Sacred Heart will never be the same.”
Torres assumed the priest had discovered something that jeopardized the Colombian drug lord’s U.S. operations. But she didn’t know what. And there was no record the good reverend had ever approached D.C. authorities.
The agent put her thoughts on hold for the time being. She found a seat, unwrapped breakfast, and opened The New York Times. She thumbed to the business section first, curious how the day would look to employees at Sachs, Kidder, and Carnegie.
The headlines jumped off the page at her. And she had no chance of stifling the “Oh my God” that escaped from her lips. Katy Anders was about to have the day from hell—a pink slip in the making and a visit from the FBI.
DENNY’S
It was 6:30 A.M. Biscuit parked his black Hummer and lumbered into the restaurant. Once seated, he unfolded his copy of the Fayetteville Observer.
“You want the usual, Biscuit honey?” His waitress poured him a monstrous cup of coffee, the rich scents of bacon and java beans filling every nostril in the room. She was a sassy young thing—rhino nose, straw flyaway hair, and razor-blade wit that made the world forget how she looked.
Biscuit nodded his head as he sipped the morning joe. “Darling, they don’t come any better than you.”
“One heart attack on a rack coming up.”
He scoured the sports section first—every score, story, and statistic. Then he skimmed the front page, not bothering to complete articles that continued inside. When Biscuit hit the business section, however, he stopped cold. He even forgot the rest of his breakfast. And food was one thing he never forgot.
Yesterday, Biscuit had chatted up the receptionist at the Palmetto Foundation. He’d learned all about Grove O’Rourke, both on the phone and later courtesy of Google. And today in bold print, Sachs, Kidder, and Carnegie was the lead story. O’Rourke had not returned his calls yesterday. He doubted the guy would call him back today.
He wiped his mouth, signaled for the check, and called Faith Ann:
“Sweetie, I’m driving down to Charleston.”
PALMER’S OFFICE
I should have flown back to New York. There are plenty of flights that leave the Holy City before eight A.M. I should have engineered a day that landed me in front of my LCD screens by noon.
That way I could have returned to Wall Street’s all-important mission, the frenzied commerce that keeps the wheels on our economic bus. Like arguing with bond traders and telling them to go bang walruses off Alaska’s coast. Apologies to the wildlife. Or explaining to clients why it’s important to invest for the long term, even though their stock portfolios haven’t made a dime over the last ten years.
But after a week in Charleston, I had succumbed to the stealthy charm of old stucco and genteel manners, to the soft Charleston dialect where locals conjugate their verbs with saccharine tenses: “We might could grab a bite to eat.”
Maybe it was the low-country pace I found so alluring. By the time I reached the Palmetto Foundation that Wednesday morning, I had already run three miles and eaten a breakfast of shrimp and buttered grits. I had even chatted with a lady, her skin the color of chocolate milk, who was selling sweetgrass baskets near the corner of Meeting and Broad.
“Women in my family been weaving five generations,” she told me. “Bet my baby will too.”
Back in New York
I would never have stopped to talk. Of course, I don’t see artisans first thing in the morning. Usually, it’s homeless guys sleeping off benders on their cardboard mattresses.
At dinner last night, Claire and I made nice. We drank too much Gavi di Gavi Black Label, which is a kick-ass bottle of white if you ask me, and put the testy meeting with Father Ricardo behind us. She told me, “Your Southern accent’s coming back.”
“You think?”
“It suits you.”
Claire insisted I use Palmer’s office. So did JoJo. At first the room felt uncomfortable, me surrounded by photos of my mentor amid all the luminaries. But Wednesday morning, I felt like Palmer was sending me alpha waves to relax. Maybe even to stay. For a moment, I sipped coffee and fantasized about opening up a branch office down here.
The morning news snapped the spell. I booted my laptop and navigated to Bloomberg’s website. The headline popped up, big and bold: MORGAN STANLEY AGREES TO BUY SKC’S BROKERAGE UNIT. Not the whole company. Just my division.
“Shit.”
Anders’s suspicions were right. Our CEO was shedding Private Client Services. I should have seen it coming—fourteen bosses in ten years who never got the mix of profits and services right.
Soon I would be working for a new company. Sort of. My industry plays an ongoing game of musical chairs. And ironically, my next boss—number fifteen—was also number thirteen: Frank Kurtz.
Zola answered on the first ring, her voice crisp and husky. “You read the news?”
“Every word.”
“What’s it mean to us?”
“Opportunity.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Change creates winners and losers. Time to keep our eyes open.”
“You think Morgan Stanley will pay us a retention bonus?”
“Who knows?”
When one brokerage firm buys another, the acquiring firm sometimes pays stockbrokers to stay. Otherwise, competitors swoop in and pay ridiculous signing bonuses to steal away top producers. Retention bonuses can be big—50 percent or more of last year’s revenues. If I was right, Zola, Chloe our sales assistant, and I would split about $10 million just to stay with SKC as it folded into Morgan Stanley.
Of course, there are trade-offs. Stockbrokers sign noncompete agreements and agree not to jump ship. It’s like enlisting in the Marines, except we make more money and nobody shoots at us.
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