by Steve Richer
Preston looked at his watch. He’d been here almost an hour. He had called Brown’s law firm and he’d been told that the attorney was at the courthouse this morning. Instead of waiting or making an appointment, Preston had decided to spring up on him.
Another five minutes passed and he spotted the short, balding man coming out of the building with two colleagues. They were all dressed in various shades of gray. Preston left his car and jogged across the street, thankful the rain had stopped at last.
Brown came to a halt when he saw Preston was waiting for him 30 feet ahead. He looked left and right as if to get his bearings and then broke from his group to meet the young mercenary.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I want to meet the man. Or the woman or the thing. Whoever is paying for all this.”
“You’re supposed to be in Africa,” Brown barked. “We’re on a deadline on this thing.”
“I’ll get back to it as soon as I’ve met the wizard. If there’s no meeting, there’s no operation. It’s in your best interests to do this because the alternative has you running around the jungle yourself and I don’t think you’d look good in camouflage.”
“What is it? You want more money?”
“I know you’re a lawyer but do you have to argue this much? Take me to the guy who hired me and then I’ll be on my way.”
“The deal is...” Brown whispered, glancing furtively over his shoulder to make sure his buddies were out of earshot.
Preston interrupted him by jabbing a finger into his fat chest. “The deal is I’ll introduce myself to your lawyer friends while you think up reasons not to arrange this meeting.”
To accentuate his point, Preston took a step toward Brown’s colleagues but the lawyer quickly raised his hands in resignation.
“Okay, fine. I’ll see what I can do.”
He produced his cell phone with one hand while he waved to his buddies with the other. God, he hated dealing with savages such as McSweeney.
~ ~ ~ ~
Marina del Rey is an oddity in the Los Angeles landscape. Then again, LA had been built on weird so anything normal would simply have stood out.
Formerly wetlands, it is a seaside community established around a harbor built in the 1950s. It is now one of the largest man-made small craft harbors in the world with its 19 marinas which can hold over 5,000 boats.
The biggest attraction of Marina del Rey is its Fisherman’s Village. Built in the style of a genuine New England fishing community with narrow, colorful two-story wooden houses, it offers souvenir shops, hotels, restaurants in addition to activities like biking and boating.
Preston was on a Mexican restaurant terrace which offered a fantastic view of the marina. The rain had stopped for good and the clouds were dispersing. The sun wasn’t quite out yet but there was still hope.
Most boats were docked and there were only two yachts out in the open. Employees were currently busy wiping water off the chairs, hoping they weren’t doing this in vain.
“I’m happy to see you but I still say you shouldn’t have come.”
Preston shook his head in disappointment and took a sip of his lemonade. Across the table was his mother.
“I don’t hear from you in almost two months and you think I’m gonna skip a meeting with you when you’re back from wherever it is you were? You have another thing coming, buster.”
“Mom,” Preston began. “Driving all the way from San Diego just for a lunch isn’t exactly what sane people do. There’s a ward in the hospital for people like that.”
“Lunch? I’m not settling for just one lunch. They’ll be dinner too.”
He smiled and he looked absentmindedly beyond her at the lighthouse, the tallest structure in the village. He had called her the night before when he had arrived at his trailer and, without giving him time to argue, she had declared she was coming for lunch the next day.
“God knows when I’ll see you again,” she continued. “You think two meals is too much of a sacrifice to see your poor old mother?”
Her tone was playful and Preston wasn’t exactly offended. Seeing family nowadays was like sack time in the Army, you took whatever you could get whenever you could get it. You never knew when the next opportunity would be.
“Even if you did disobey me, I still love you. I just downgraded your Christmas present but I still love you.”
“Smartass,” she chided before taking a sip of water.
The waitress, obviously not at all pleased to cover the terrace area where there were only these two customers, came over and took their orders.
“So, can you tell me a little bit about what you’re doing right now?”
He shook his head, his lips tight.
“You know how it is, I can’t tell you anything. What I can say though is that I think you’ll be proud of me.”
“You really can’t say anything? Not even a little bit?”
“One day it’ll be on the news and you’ll talk about it with your friends and you’ll be very proud of me, mom.”
“I’m already proud of you, Preston. Unless you get drunk and drive into a bus full of nuns after having raped underage girls and robbed a bank, I’ll always be proud of you.”
“I know, but this is big. Dad would have been proud too.” He paused, raised his lemonade to his lips, and set the glass down without drinking. “It’s just, maybe... Well, maybe I’m not too proud of myself.”
“That’s nonsense. You have nothing to be ashamed about.”
“Mom, tell me how I’ve been a positive influence on people. Tell me what I’ve done right in my life. I failed my marriage, I got kicked out of the military. And you know how I lost my job at MHU. I killed a goddamn general, mom. One of our generals. What is there to be proud about?”
She moved her glass aside and leaned forward. “You gave all of your money so your father could have that surgery.”
“And look at all the good it did,” Preston grumbled.
“You don’t advertise it but you have a good heart, Preston.”
He dismissed her claim with a shake of the head as he looked away again.
“I’ll succeed this time, mom,” he whispered with fragile confidence. “I need to. You just wait.”
And then it started raining again.
~ ~ ~ ~
Preston received the phone call just after lunch and he was instructed to meet Brown outside his law firm in an hour. The idea was that the lawyer would drive him to a location where somebody else close to the money man would pick him up.
Brown had explained that he wasn’t the personal attorney of the man behind the coup. He was the lawyer hired by another lawyer, all in an effort to create another buffer of deniability, isolating the power from the crime.
Now an uncomfortable Brown was driving his BMW with Preston next to him. He loathed being forced to take a backseat in this part of the operation. He hated having to pass the torch to someone else.
“If this is about getting more money...”
“You’re obsessed with money, aren’t you?”
“I’m a lawyer!” Brown exploded as if this was a proper justification.
Preston’s lips twitched and it could almost be mistaken for a smile.
Preston was dropped off in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Santa Monica 15 minutes later. A woman in a Honda Civic was waiting for him. She was in her early 20s which told him she was most likely not someone important. She had to be some sort of intern on chauffeur duty.
She offered her first name and chatted a little about sports and the weather—it was raining again. She knew enough however not to inquire about her guest and he didn’t volunteer anything.
They drove along the coast, arriving in Malibu a little while later. The Honda turned off the Pacific Coast Highway onto a private driveway which was more akin to a bona fide road.
Sixty feet in, they cleared a security checkpoint where the guard was not your average rent-a-cop. He was in shape and had the
military bearing of a former soldier. Whoever lived here took his security seriously, Preston judged.
Chapter 34
The Honda drove up the road and it was soon obvious this wasn’t merely a house. It was an estate.
The beachfront property was built on five lots and had all the fixings. Fountains, gardens, tennis courts, guest bungalows, it all led the way to the main attraction, a 30,000-square-foot Venetian-style palace.
The woman dropped him off and left. A man in a well-tailored suit greeted him and Preston pegged him as a butler although he looked like an accountant. The thought of being underdressed occurred to him as he was wearing dark slacks, comfortable hiking shoes, and a Hawaiian shirt. He decided he didn’t care.
“Follow me, please.”
The soldier of fortune did as he was told. He had expected to be taken directly to a living room or perhaps a home office. What actually happened was that the butler offered Preston a genuine tour of the mansion.
They passed through a grand ballroom, inspected an expansive dining room with majestic views of the Pacific. They went up the wide staircase and briefly saw the owner’s 2,000 square-foot master suite. They went down again and paused in the game room which contained a bar, a pool table, and various top-of-the-line arcade games.
The man was a skilled tour guide, giving history and anecdotes as if they were trade secrets when they were in fact rather banal.
“These little tours have become somewhat mandatory,” he said. “The boss says that everybody who comes here wants to see the house though they’re always too shy to ask. So now it’s become standard operating procedure for new guests.”
Eventually, they made their way to the basement. In a room which had more in common with a warehouse – a very polished warehouse – was a collection of automobiles. At first glance Preston counted 20. There were Ferraris and Bentleys, old and new.
There was a regal 1935 Duesenberg next to a 1955 Mercedes Gull-wing Preston recognized from a magazine article. This was obviously a garage though it had more in common with a museum. An elevator in a corner lifted cars to ground level.
“I always keep this for last,” the butler admitted upon seeing the expression on his guest’s face.
A few moments later Preston was taken upstairs into a stately office. The place was huge and decorated with enough money to pay off a small country’s national debt. The furniture was all of the gilt-and-brocade variety, probably dating back to one King Louis or another.
Floor to ceiling windows made up an entire wall, offering a view of a flower garden and the ocean beyond. On one end of the 30-foot long study was a massive desk on which were a computer and office supplies.
The other end of the room consisted of couches over an authentic Persian rug. There was a sideboard against the wall on which sat an array of crystal decanters presumably filled with liquor.
Preston was alone now. He began strolling to inspect the premises, even going as far as testing one of the sofas for comfort. He then went to the eastern wall. It was covered with plaques as well as framed photographs and magazine covers all featuring the same man, his host.
For the first time, Preston knew what he was up against. He recognized the man in the pictures. A blind kid in Africa would have known who it was. The man was none other than Ward Wyatt.
One laminated newspaper article read Wyatt: Second-Richest Man Is Good Enough. A Time magazine cover proclaimed him Man of the Year. On the cover of Fortune magazine: The Billionaire Philanthropist.
Preston scanned pictures of Wyatt with US Presidents, British royalty, and Hollywood stars and at last stopped on a National Geographic cover: Wyatt Foundation - Savior of Africa.
“Please don’t be impressed with any of that,” a voice boomed behind Preston. “It’s my daughter who insists I keep those.”
Preston turned around to find Ward Wyatt himself walking into the office. The man was in his late 40s and was quite handsome though not in a classical sense. His nose was a little too big, his hair a little too long. There were acne scars. However, his casual dress and friendly demeanor displayed his confidence.
In spite of having figured out who owned the house and who ultimately was his boss, Preston’s mouth was agape. Sometimes there just wasn’t hiding your surprise.
“Were you expecting someone else, Preston?”
“Honestly, I don’t know who I expected.”
Wyatt motioned for his guest to take a seat on one of the seemingly ancient couches as he himself sat down.
“The butler give you a tour of the house?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a very nice home. I loved your car collection.”
“I used to spend half an hour trying to choose which car to use. Nowadays, I have a bowl where I put all the keys and every morning I pick at random.”
“You could open a museum, charge admission. You’d make a fortune.”
Wyatt laughed warmly and crossed his legs.
“You know,” he said. “I really appreciate what you’re doing. It takes a lot of courage to do what you do.”
“What it takes is a lot of money.”
“Is that why you’re here? I’ve been told by my personal lawyer that Mr. Brown thinks you want more money. But I don’t think that’s the reason of your visit.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You want an explanation.”
“I want a reason,” Preston justified.
The billionaire stood and headed over to the sideboard where he poured two stiff drinks.
“I was 21 years old when I started my business. I borrowed every nickel in a ten-mile radius and I invested in small emerging companies. When I had made enough money, I turned from venture capitalist to full-blown industrialist.”
He brought back the drinks, handing one to Preston, and sat down again.
The young man was familiar with Wyatt’s story. There had been news reports on him, articles, books. He had heard somewhere they were considering making a movie about him. The guy was one of the richest men in the world and there were few people who didn’t like him.
The story went that barely out of his teens he’d had his parents take a second mortgage on their house so that he could afford to buy a milk run from an old man who was retiring.
He did the deliveries himself for one summer and soon leveraged his business against the purchase of another milk run. Within a year, he had three and he then sold his profitable company for a tidy profit.
From there, he bought struggling companies while getting a college degree by correspondence. He became famous for making small conglomerates of unaffiliated businesses – for example, two fast food joints, a gas station, and a record store them which he sold to small town investors looking to move up in the world.
He was a millionaire before he was 25. Next, he moved up to venture capitalism where he would personally invest in businesses he believed in, taking a stake in each company and never failing to see profits. The dot-com boom of the late 90s made him a billionaire. Now he was a majority owner of half a dozen corporations.
So what the hell does he want with me? Preston wondered.
Chapter 35
“I made a lot of money in software, financial services, oil. A goddamn lot of money, Preston. But it left me empty. I know it sounds cliché but I needed to make sure I was making a difference in the world.”
“Hence the Wyatt Foundation.”
“So you’ve been reading the papers, uh?”
“No, just your wall.”
Wyatt chuckled as he absentmindedly looked at his wall of fame. “The Wyatt Foundation allows me to give back to the community on a global scale. Governments around the world have dropped the ball so it’s up to people like me to make it right.”
“By overthrowing countries in Africa,” Preston jabbed, trying his drink for the first time. Single-malt scotch.
“Nobody cares about Africa. You’re lucky if the latest genocide makes it on the news for thirty seconds and even then people switch to
another channel.”
“Regime changes should be up to the United Nations.”
“That’s funny, I hadn’t pegged you as a stupid man. It takes the UN five years and seven committees to decide what color to repaint the entrance hall. I’ve had enough of this indecision.”
He drained his glass and stood up.
“I started my foundation to help people,” Wyatt continued. “The little people in the villages who can’t fend for themselves. I spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to provide drinking water and schools and doctors for these villagers.”
“But it’s not enough.”
“You’ve been there, you’ve seen it. You do something good and then government officials come in and fuck everything up. You can’t get a break. So I guess it’s up to my foundation to make things better once more.”
Preston put his drink down and moved forward on the couch. “I understand all that and I agree with you. But the reason I’m here is to ask you this: why Katoga?”
Wyatt stared at his guest, his eyes gauging him.
“Come with me,” he finally said.
After hesitating for a moment, Preston followed his host out of the office. They went through a passageway Preston hadn’t been shown during the tour and moments later they found themselves outside.
The terrace was divided into different sections on different levels, with the centerpiece being the Olympic-size, crescent-shaped swimming pool. Flower beds and other ornamental arrangements delineated these sections and Preston caught himself appreciating the landscaping job. It was definitely a cut above what his crew was capable of.
Wyatt led Preston to a frosted glass-top table on the lowest level. It was next to a marble balustrade at the edge of the cliff and it offered a great view of the private beach below and the blue Pacific Ocean.
On this table were a pitcher of fruit juice and some snacks. Preston’s mouth watered at the sight of Chex Mix. Already seated at the table was a black man in his 50s. His short hair was mostly white and his eyes were sparkling affably, like they were smiling.
