by Terry Fallis
Sarah stiffened and seemed to grow an inch or two. She clenched her fists and emitted a noise from somewhere deep within her that sounded a lot like a collision of rage, exasperation, and frustration. Then she bolted from the room. I turned to follow her out, having made absolutely no contribution to the meeting thus far. But my father said:
“Hem, wait. There’s something else I need you to know. I’ll tell Sarah when she’s cooled down.”
I sat back down as Dad closed the door that Sarah had almost pulled off its hinges.
“I’m not well. I’m going into hospital in four weeks for what’s called a prostatectomy. I have prostate cancer.”
“Dad …”
“We’ve caught it early, and the odds of a full recovery are good. But it’s not a sure thing. I’m not yet out of the woods. My desire for you to come back to Chicago was driven as much by my illness as by my respect for family tradition.”
“Dad, I’m so sorry. You should have told us.”
“I didn’t want your decision about joining the company to be complicated by my medical situation. When you gave me your final answer a week or so ago, I felt I had to act. Do not say anything to Sarah about this. I think I have the right to share this news with her. I want her to hear it from me.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Hem, this deal is all but done. The final paperwork will be signed tomorrow and we’re making the formal announcement in the afternoon, here. I’m sorry you found out this way.”
I shook hands with Dad and left him there. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I found Sarah in a little alcove down the hall a ways. She was leaning against the window with her head in her hands. I put my hand on her shoulder. A movement caught my eye. I looked past her through the glass and saw Henderson Watt closing the trunk of a sparkling brand-new Mercedes.
“Wow, that is one nice and expensive car,” I said.
Sarah followed my gaze.
“That’s a new car. He drove a Nissan before. He must have just picked it up.”
“I can see that it’s a new car. That model was just introduced last month. I love that car,” I replied, snapping a photo of it with my cellphone.
We stood there for a moment saying nothing to each other. I heard a stairwell door open down the hall and then footsteps headed our way. A second or two later, Henderson Watt appeared. Sarah took two steps forward and placed her index finger on his sternum. Henderson didn’t back away an inch and just smirked.
“I’m going to find out what’s behind all of this, and when I do, I know it’s all going to come down on you. You will be held to account for all of this.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy. If I were you, I’d keep an eye on Mendez,” he said. “It’s always the last place you look.”
Then he turned and walked back toward Dad’s office.
“He’s just trying to throw us off the scent,” I said, but deep down, I guess I wasn’t sure. I looked out the window again at the sleek silver Mercedes. “Well, whatever his game is, he must be doing pretty well to score those wheels.”
“I don’t think he’s on a Mercedes salary,” she said and then sighed. “Man, I need a drink.”
We spent the next few hours in a bar, doing what one usually does in a bar.
“What the fuck are we gonna do?” Sarah asked.
“It sounds to me like the deal is done. I’m not sure there’s much we can do. I’m not even sure there’s much we should do.”
“Hem, there’s no reason that this three-generation family business can’t be a four-generation family business. I don’t want it to end like this. There’s something else going on.”
Yeah, our father has prostate cancer. I wanted to say that, but didn’t.
Beer was our poison of choice that afternoon, Miller Genuine Draft, to be precise. And we had many. By early evening, we were pretty well talked out. After a plate of chicken wings that served badly as dinner, I opened up the photo of Henderson’s new car to make it my new cover shot on my cellphone. I loved that car.
“Messy HR issue, my ass,” Sarah said to no one in particular before biting into another wing.
That triggered a thought. I mean her comment, not her chicken wing. It sparked just a sliver of an idea, really more of a hunch. On a flyer, I shot off a quick email, but said nothing to Sarah.
She leaned back in her chair in the general direction of the bartender.
“Two more MGDS here, please.”
CHAPTER 14
I drank Coke for the rest of the night so I could drive us home. We arrived at Sarah’s condo shortly after midnight. We’d just flopped on the couch when my cellphone chimed with an email. It was from Diana Ross.
Hi, Hem,
Sorry it took me so long to respond but I was at my daughter’s music night at the school and had to shut down my BB until we’d suffered through all 34 acts. I love my daughter, but I’ve now accepted that she is not destined for Broadway. Anyway, I forwarded your email to a friend who was pulling the night shift and she was able to run the plate. Here’s the scoop. The car is leased from Harper Mercedes in Chicago. It’s a fleet car registered in the name of MaxWorldCorp. Hope that helps. Cheers!
Diana
“Um, Sarah, we’ve got something here,” I said, sitting up and leaning forward to reread the email.
“Yeah, I’ve got a headache already and I didn’t even have the benefit of being fully drunk. Seems unfair, somehow.”
“No, I’m serious. Listen. Henderson’s fancy new car is registered under MaxWorldCorp’s fleet lease,” I said. “Why would our principal competitor be paying for Henderson Watt’s car? Even if I didn’t watch too many cop shows on TV, this would strike me as suspicious.”
“No way! You’re shittin’ me,” Sarah replied, joining me in the bolt-upright position. “Let me see that.”
I gave her my cell.
“Who the hell is Diana Ross? Do you actually know someone named Diana Ross?”
“It’s a long story, but yes I do. She’s a great singer, after a few drinks, and she works at the NYPD. This is definitely legit. Or as they might say on TV, ‘This intel is solid.’ ”
“Holy shit! Holy shit! We’ve got him.”
We sat in silence for few minutes, letting the news swirl around in our heads.
“Okay, how did you meet Henderson, in the very beginning, I mean,” I asked.
Sarah looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds before responding.
“Our first meeting was in a bar.”
“Do you go there often?”
“Every Thursday night a bunch of us go from the office. It’s kind of a weekly girls’ night out.”
“Do you always go to the same bar?”
“Almost always.”
“What about the second time you met him?”
“Hmmm. It was a few days later at my Starbucks.”
“Do you go there regularly?”
“Every friggin’ morning,” she replied. “Wait. No. No way. You think this whole Henderson thing was set up? You think Henderson planned all this, meeting me, getting me to introduce him to Dad?”
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to follow the steps laid out in the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook. But it’s plausible, isn’t it?”
“So you’re saying Henderson was following me for a while, learning my habits, where I regularly went and when?”
“I don’t know. But there’s a pattern there. He shows up at the bar on a Thursday night, knowing you’d be there. He starts up a conversation, turns on the charm, flashes those very white and very straight teeth, and cocks that nicely coiffed head of his. And you like him.”
“Well, it wasn’t quite like that,” Sarah replied, then paused. “Actually, it was quite a bit like that.”
“He doesn’t push his luck that night. There’s too much at stake,” I continued, pacing the room now as my conspiracy-addled synapses kept firing. “So he shows up at Starbucks a few days later and just happens to bump into you. You renew
the conversation, and the first date is made. Right?”
“Well, um, yeah,” she said. “I’m starting to feel stupid now. I’m starting to feel played.”
“Do you remember how he introduced the idea of him working at Hemmingwear?”
“It was my idea. But he did kind of lead me right to that conclusion. He kept saying he was keen to land a gig back in the rag trade.”
“Did he say that early on, before you told him where you worked?”
“Hmmm. Yes, he did. I remember thinking it was kind of an odd thing to say so soon after meeting.”
“He wanted to get that on the table before you told him where you worked. Of course he already knew where you worked, but he didn’t want you to know that he knew.”
“That circular thinking is doing nothing for my headache.” Sarah sighed.
“It all fits. You just happen to meet this apparently nice guy who just happens to work in our business and just happens to be looking for a new job. He turns on the charm, you collapse into a quivering heap of ‘I think I like this guy,’ you take him to meet Dad, he cranks up the charm again, blows sunshine up Dad’s back door, and the deal is done.”
“Well …”
“Wait, I’m on a roll. Let’s just play this out,” I said, reclaiming the floor. “As he sucks up to Dad, finds his hot buttons, pushes them all, slides in closer and closer, he starts to drift away from you. He doesn’t need you any more. He’s achieved his goal, accomplished his mission. A plant from MaxWorldCorp is now inside Hemmingwear, right where the decisions are made. What’s worse, Henderson Watt is actually on the Hemmingwear payroll.”
Sarah sat and looked out the window for a good three minutes. That’s a long time when silence hangs. I let her think it all through. By then, I was certain of my theory. It seemed far-fetched and very high risk, yet all the pieces seemed to fit. Still, I waited and said nothing. She stood up and walked around a bit. Then she went out on the back deck and sat down in the dark. It had been fifteen minutes since either of us had spoken when she came back in.
“Okay, let’s assume I’ve been completely duped by that conniving, duplicitous asshole, and I’m not certain that’s what’s happening here, but let’s assume it is. Why would he do all this and then work on the sale of Hemmingwear to …” she paused and narrowed her eyes. She looked as if she were staring through me and all the way to the horizon.
“What’s the name of the holding company making the play for us?” she asked.
“Preston.”
She pulled her MacBook Air out of her bag and sat down at the kitchen table. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she surfed the Internet, opening and bookmarking multiple pages. She was very focused. I could catch glimpses of websites as they flitted across her screen. I saw plenty of Google search pages, the New York Stock Exchange, some major business databases, the Securities Commission, and several government websites. I wasn’t sure what she was doing but neither was I about to ask. She was in a different zone. She might as well have hung a Do Not Disturb sign around her neck. So I grabbed my iPad and did a bit of work myself.
I called up the photo I’d snapped of Henderson’s lunch partner. Then I scoured the MaxWorldCorp website for bios and images of their senior leadership team. No matches. Then I checked out the MaxWorldCorp board of directors. Nothing. I knew I’d seen the guy before somewhere. I looked over at Sarah. She was head down and deep into her research. She’d grabbed a roll of shelf paper from under the sink and pulled off a three-foot-long strip. Now she was drawing boxes and connecting lines in a massive network that looked like a web spun by a spider on crack.
I saw a brown envelope next to her bag on the table.
“Are those the Carlos shots?” I asked.
Sarah didn’t even acknowledge that I was in the building let alone that I’d just asked her a perfectly simple question. She had shut everything and everyone else out as she burned up the Internet. I grabbed the envelope and pulled out the photos taken at the MaxWorldCorp AGM. And there it was. In one of the shots, I could see our mystery man standing behind Carlos, not quite in the fray. Only half of his face was visible and even then his hand was covering part of his chin. But it was definitely the guy Henderson had met for lunch. There was no doubt in my mind. He was well in the background of the photo but his eyes were clearly focused on Carlos. I was about to interrupt Sarah with this news, but realized that nothing short of a cruise missile could distract her from her task.
So I waited. I even dozed for a bit. Still seated on the couch, I was awakened at 2:45 a.m. by what can best be described as a cry of anguish.
“I am such a fucking idiot!” Sarah shouted. “I am a tool!”
“I like you,” I said, slowly emerging from my nap.
“Small consolation, because we are screwed. We are so royally screwed.”
She closed her laptop, grabbed the sheet of shelf paper, now covered by intersecting lines and squares, and overlaid with a thick red line she’d traced with a Sharpie. The red line meandered from the bottom left corner of the sheet to the top right, with umpteen stops in between.
“Let’s go.”
I grabbed the Carlos photos and followed her out the door.
At that hour, it took only about six minutes to drive to the family homestead. Sarah mapped out the plan on the way over. I listened and said “Okay” four times. Before we got out of the car, I turned on the dome light and showed Sarah the Carlos photo with the partially obscured but still clear shot of Henderson’s lunch date in the background. She just shook her head. When we reached the front door, Sarah grabbed the heavy iron door knocker.
“Whoa, it’s three o’clock in the morning,” I said.
She banged the door knocker not twice, not three times, but seven heavy blows. Had there been neighbours’ homes anywhere near Chateau Hemmingway, they’d all be awake now and about to dial the police.
After waiting only long enough for Dad to have awakened and pulled back the covers on his bed, Sarah swung the knocker another six times. Eventually, the light in the hall turned on and the angry eyes of our father shot daggers through the small leaded panes in the door window. He slid back the bolt and opened the door. He stood there in paisley pyjamas and a burgundy silk robe. He looked positively patrician. Then he shouted.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing here at this ungodly hour! This is my home!”
“Dad, there was a time when this was our home, too,” I said.
“What do you want? I said everything I’m going to say on the topic this afternoon. The deal is as good as done. It’s too late.”
Sarah pushed past him before he could finish.
“Important!” she said. “You’re going to want to see this. It cannot wait.”
She was out of sight in an instant, heading for his study just off the hallway. I shrugged when Dad looked my way. I said nothing, just motioned with my open hand to suggest he follow her in. He did. I closed the door behind me and caught up as Sarah was leading Dad by the hand to his chair behind the desk. She’d already turned on a floor lamp and his desk lamp, casting a warm and inviting glow over the room.
“What is going …”
“Shhh! No talking,” Sarah commanded. “Give us thirty minutes to lay something out, and if you’re not convinced at the end, go ahead and sell off the family company just as you planned. So for half an hour, just sit and listen, please, Dad.”
I thought he was going to lose it then, but he pulled back and closed his mouth. Sarah stood in the middle of the lamplight spilling onto the floor in front of Dad’s chair. He interlocked his fingers and rested his hands in his lap.
“Dad, if you believe what we’re about to say, you cannot sign the acquisition agreement tomorrow. It’s not what you think,” she started. “Just hear me out on this and, please, do not interrupt me until I’m finished. We’ve got three important and related points to make. Until we’ve made them, please, just listen, except when Hem poses a few questions. You can answer the
m, but nothing more till we’re done. Understood?”
Dad was beginning to get the sense that she was serious, that this was serious. He nodded.
“First of all, we have gathered indisputable evidence that Henderson Watt is in the employ of MaxWorldCorp. Hem confirmed with an inside contact at the New York Police Department that the new Mercedes he’s now driving is actually registered to MaxWorldCorp. It’s part of their fleet lease.”
Dad opened his mouth, first in shock, and then to say something.
“Shhh, not yet!” Sarah cut him off. “With that revelation as our starting point, and putting the pieces together, Henderson Watt almost certainly had me under surveillance before he engineered our first meeting at a bar way back when. He then arranged to bump into me a day or so later at a Starbucks. Building a relationship with me was how he planned to land a job at Hemmingwear and get close to you and could start to work on his real agenda. And that’s exactly what he did. I fell for it. I’m sorry. When his rapport with you became strong enough, he sacrificed me. He used me only to get to you.” Dad raised his hand.
“Not yet, Dad.”
He lowered his hand.
“Okay, secondly …”
She nodded at me. I stood up, pulled out my BlackBerry, fiddled with the photo on the screen, and handed it to Dad. “Do you know this guy?” I asked.
“Of course. That’s Tim Withrow, CEO of Preston Holdings.”
I hadn’t been expecting this, but clearly Sarah had.
“No shit!” I exclaimed.
“Shhh! We’re not done yet!” Sarah snapped and then gestured for me to continue.
“Dad, have you authorized anyone else to speak to Preston Holdings during the negotiations, or have you been doing all the talking yourself?”
“Of course I’ve been doing it all myself. It’s my company,” he said. “I’m the only one allowed to speak to Preston.”
Then I leaned down to pinch the image on the screen as Dad still held my cellphone. The photo grew smaller and a second figure now appeared across a café table from Tim Withrow.
