by Nick James
“And the bad news?”
“There really isn’t any, they’re pretty thorough and would want to do some due diligence investigating anyone. I’m acting as their front man, their public face as it were.”
“I suppose we could talk, how does tonight sound?” Jonathan said just a little too fast, maybe sounding a little bit too desperate.
“Tonight, oh sorry, I’m afraid I’m tied up. Perhaps tomorrow evening if that would work?”
“I’ll have to check my calendar, oh hell, I’ll make it work,” Jonathan said. “Say we meet over here, at my office. I’d like to show you around, give you a feel for what we do.”
“That’s very kind of you, shall we say sixish?”
“Six it is, Robert, I’ll clear my schedule so we’re uninterrupted.”
“Looking forward to this, Jonathan,” Bobby said and hung up the phone.
Bobby dialed Morris Montcreff’s number next.
It rang twice and then Montcreff was on the line, “Yes.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Montcreff, Bobby Custer.”
“Yes.”
“I was out at the Denton home this afternoon.”
“And?”
“It seems Mr. Denton had another episode. He…”
“Episode?”
“Yes sir, seems he was involved in a bit of a tiff with his wife. Apparently assaulted her, the police were called.”
“Noah Denton?”
“Yes sir, the police were called, Mr. Allan one of our partners was…”
“I know who the hell Virgil Allan is.”
“Yes sir, he was called and talked the police into taking Mr. Denton to the mental health facility over at Regions Hospital as opposed to arresting him. So at least he dodged that problem. He’s there now, I stopped in to see him this afternoon, but he was sleeping and I didn’t want to disturb him,” Bobby lied.
“And the wife?”
“A bruise on her cheek, and said she didn’t want him back in the house until someone could determine what’s wrong with him.”
“Mmm-mmm. Anything else?”
“No sir, we were officially closed for business today, the funeral for Elizabeth Saunders, the woman killed in Paris.”
“Yeah, terrible thing,” Montcreff said sounding like he didn’t mean a word of it.
“Yes sir. That’s about it, my day was fairly taken up with the funeral and Mr. Denton I’m afraid.”
“Very well, call me with any updates on Denton,” Montcreff said and hung up.
Bobby finished the night searching Bannon Dynamics online looking for any information he could find. He didn’t find very much. It appeared Jonathan had been something of a whiz kid in his younger days, met with some early and substantial success then apparently lived off the reputation and funds from those early highs until now. The last meaningful online article on the company was dated 2007, a lifetime ago in the tech world. Bobby guessed Jonathan Bannon was running on fumes and that brought a smile to his face.
Chapter Fifty
Bobby stopped in at the Regions Hospital Mental Health Facility on his way to the office.
“And the purpose of your visit?” the woman behind the receptionist counter asked. She had a gold nametag that read Cecile and a black dye job on her hair that could be spotted a block away.
“I wanted to see how he was doing?”
“You’re a family member?”
“No, I’m a business associate.”
“I’m sorry,” she said sounding like she wasn’t. “But visitation for Mr. Denton has been restricted to members of his immediate family.”
“Is there a way I could leave him a note or a card that could be delivered?”
“You could put something in the mail. If you leave a card here, I’m afraid I can’t guarantee it will ever get to Mr. Denton.”
Amazing. “I’ll do that, mail him a card. Thank you,” Bobby said and left.
Once in the office he phoned the file room, Dorsey answered after the fifth or sixth ring sounding extremely stressed.
“Yes.”
“Hi, Mike, Bobby Custer, everything all right? You sound stressed out for it being a little after nine in the morning.”
“Orders from the high command, I’m to do a check of all our files. I’ve got reams of printouts from two different operating systems and have to manually go through them one at a time. What do you need?”
“Just more Montcreff files, mind if I come over and get them?”
“Please be my guest. Come on over and help yourself.”
Bobby opened the door to the file room just as Dorsey set a stack of files on a four-wheeled cart. “Keys are on the desk, just leave a note listing what you take, I’ve got to get these into the conference room,” he said then rolled the cart into the hallway while Bobby held the door for him.
Bobby waited a few seconds then hurried over to the desk, grabbed the keys and randomly opened a half dozen drawers and pulled out files. Then he went to the Montcreff files, pulled out the next batch of accordion files he was going to look at and shoved the miscellaneous files in the middle of the Montcreff stack. He was just heading for the door when Dorsey rolled the empty cart back in.
“Thanks for being patient man, here put those files on the cart and I’ll wheel them to your office for you.”
“Not to worry, sounds like you’ve got your hands full. What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure, something about Angie, doesn’t seem to make much sense.”
Bobby remembered suggesting to Bennett Hinz that Angie may have stolen files. “Like you don’t have enough to worry about. Well, thanks for the help, Mike. I’ll get these back to you by the end of the day.”
“Thanks,” Dorsey said, already comparing the files in an open drawer to the master printout he was holding.
Bobby had just entered his office and set the stack of files on his desk when the phone rang.
“Bobby Custer.”
“Bobby, Mike hey I forgot to get a list from you of the files you took, can you run that over or I can come over and get it if you’re jammed.”
“You got enough on your plate, Mike. I’ll bring the list over,” he said, then hurriedly pulled the group of random files from the middle of the stack and placed them in his computer bag. He typed the file title and decimal code from the Montcreff files, printed off the sheet and ran it back to the file room.
“Thanks man, sorry to be a pain. But suddenly it’s like homeland security or the CIA just arrived,” Dorsey said, he was two file drawers down from where Bobby had left him no more than five minutes ago.
“Everything checking out okay?”
“Yeah, so far. It’s a pain in the ass I don’t need right now. Mr. Hinz suggested it might be a good idea if I worked the weekend, which was not what I wanted to hear.”
“How you set for coffee?”
“Coffee? I haven’t had a chance yet, I’m telling you…”
“Let me grab you a cup, it’s the least I can do for helping me out.”
“You don’t have…”
“I insist, Mike, now not another word. Well maybe one or two, you take cream or sugar?”
“No just black and thanks, man.”
When Bobby returned the Montcreff files at the end of the day Dorsey was locked in an animated conversation with Charles Sawyer and Virgil Allan at the far end of the file room.
“Just leave them on the desk, Bobby,” Dorsey called then returned to dealing with the two partners. Bobby was only too happy to comply and fled the room.
Chapter Fifty-One
Bannon Dynamics was located in an industrial park made up of one-story brick buildings with floor-to-ceiling front windows and loading docks and dumpsters located in the rear. The area had been made up of turn-of-the-century two and three-story warehouses and manufacturing facilities until sometime in the late 1980s when those structures were torn down and replaced with the current layout.
The Bannon Dynamics office suite, one of s
ix in the long building, was just a block off the main drag. Each suite in the building had a company name stenciled in white letters on a glass door. The parking lot consisted of perpendicular parking along the front of the building and was virtually full until the last suite, Bannon Dynamics, where just one car was parked.
A silver Audi A6 that Bobby guessed was four or five years old was parked in front of the Bannon Dynamics door, surrounded by a half dozen empty parking spaces. Its vanity plate read ‘BanDyn’.
He was a good half hour early when he pulled in front of the office suite next door to Bannon Dynamics. He entered Bannon’s small, empty lobby, careful to slowly close the door so as not to make a sound, then took his time sizing up the room.
The reception desk looked empty, not because no one was sitting behind it but because nothing was there, no phone, no computer, not so much as a note pad or, for that matter, a chair. Bobby ran his hand across the desk and it came up dusty.
There was an office opposite the lobby with a reinforced glass window in the wall that looked into the lobby. The office was completely empty, although there were imprints in the carpet where a desk had been and four silhouettes on the wall where framed items had once hung.
A hallway from the lobby led straight back to a door marked ‘warehouse.’ Bobby quietly made his way down the hall past a restroom, a lunch room sporting four chairs, a table and a coffee pot. He passed another empty office and then heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner running in the next room.
He cautiously approached. The title on the door read President and Jonathan Bannon stood just inside with his back to the door, vacuuming and sipping a drink.
Bobby gave half a thought to strangling him with the vacuum cord, but instead crept past the office and through the door labeled ‘warehouse.’ A large open room with a garage door at the far end stood virtually empty. Off to one side were three desks with computer screens, keyboards, wastebaskets and just one phone. Coffee mugs sat on two of the desks. One of the mugs was half full, but mold covered the surface of the coffee.
Bobby hurried back out to the main part of the office, cautiously opening the warehouse door just a crack hoping he wouldn’t run into Jonathan. He needn’t have worried, he could still hear the vacuum running in the office.
Bobby knocked loudly on the office door and a smiling Jonathan casually turned around and got a shocked look on his face when he realized who was standing in the doorway. He turned the vacuum off and said, “Why Bobby, oh my, I wasn’t expecting you for…”
“Yeah sorry, I know I’m a little early, but I just had to get out of the office. You know how it can get.”
Jonathan rolled the vacuum over against the wall and casually set his drink glass on the edge of his desk. “Come in, come in, listen, set that computer bag down and let me give you the grand tour. How about something to brighten the day? It’s five o’clock somewhere,” he joked.
“No thanks on the drink. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ll take you up on that tour though.”
Jonathan grabbed his glass, took a sip and said, “Follow me.” Then he led Bobby back down the hall to the front lobby. “This is our lobby,” he said and made a grand gesture with his hand encompassing the empty room.
He stepped into the empty office with the window that looked into the lobby and announced, “Our marketing department. We’re in the middle of rearranging some things and I’m in the process of bringing a new individual aboard, grinding through the interviewing process right now. Let me tell you, it’s damn time-consuming.”
Bobby nodded like it made sense, and thought, you’ve got more than one screw loose. Jonathan proceeded to take him through two more empty offices and the virtually empty warehouse casually explaining how they were in the midst of making changes and adapting, hiring, developing and shipping the product they obviously didn’t have, all of which Bobby knew was complete bullshit. He just wasn’t convinced Jonathan was aware of that fact.
“Well, let’s get back to my office, where it’s a little more comfortable. You sure I can’t talk you into having a little something?”
Forty minutes later Jonathan was pouring his third bourbon on ice and Bobby was putting his iPad away as he told Jonathan he’d pass all the promising information on to his investment group first thing in the morning. The notes on his iPad consisted of eleven key points Jonathan had droned on about while Bobby typed the comment BULLSHIT after each one.
“The contracts in China sound especially intriguing,” Bobby said then zipped the computer bag closed and stood.
“Sure you won’t join me,” Jonathan raised his glass in a toast and didn’t bother to wait for an answer. He smiled briefly, smacked his lips and said, “We just need to get over this little hump and we’re in clover. Let me know what their thought is on percentages. Of course it would be commensurate with the amount of investment.” He emphasized the point with another hearty swallow.
“I can tell you for a fact everyone will be very interested,” Bobby said heading for the door.
“Keep me posted, of course we’ve had a number of inquiries so the faster they move on this the better. The line’s forming,” Jonathan said then drained his glass and decided another would probably be a good idea.
“Believe me I’ll stress the urgency,” Bobby said. “There is one thing, of course we’d like to see your financials, just the last thirty-six months. And we’ll need the name of the Chinese group, just to check. I don’t see us contacting them at this stage.”
Jonathan half choked on the bourbon. “Financials?”
“Yeah, just standard, you know.”
“That’s a bit, well I mean that’s a little unusual, isn’t it? I mean this project we’re talking about, it’s, it’s in its infancy, barely off the ground. That’s the whole idea, Robert you’d be getting in on the ground floor. Be happy to forward the business plan, projections, that sort of thing, but the financials, well like I said, we’re barely off the launching pad.”
“That’s why we have to be so careful, Jonathan. These folks have been around the block a few times. They’re tough, which is also why they’re so damn successful.”
Jonathan looked crestfallen and more or less collapsed in his chair. “I’ll have to think about it, might be better to just soldier on, alone,” he said then jutted his chin forward, looking like he’d just decided to climb Mount Everest.
You are certifiably nuts Bobby thought. “Look, I better get going, I’m almost late for another meeting, Appreciate the time, think about those financials while I spread the good word, Jonathan. Best to Fran,” Bobby said.
Jonathan responded with a long sip.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Bobby brought his cup of coffee into his office, then dialed Dorsey before he took his first sip. Ten rings later he hung up and walked back to the file room. Along the way he noted the door to Virgil Allan’s office was closed and he heard at least three different voices coming from inside. One of the voices sounded like Dorsey, all participants seemed to be engaged in a reasonable-sounding discussion.
He hurried into the file room, grabbed the ring of keys, pulled a number of random files from different drawers then placed them in between the stack of Montcreff files. He wrote a note listing the Montcreff file titles and decimal codes and left it on the desk. An hour later he phoned the file room. Dorsey answered after a few rings sounding like he’d already worked a forty-hour day.
“Yes.”
“Hi Mike, Bobby, just checking to make sure you got my note. You okay? You sound beat.”
“Just my turn in the barrel, again. Yeah, I got the note, thanks you’re about the only one around here who’s following proper procedure. I’m coming up with a laundry list of shit we’re missing which is making for some very unhappy senior partners.”
“You think Angie took them?”
“I’m not sure, but that’s the direction they’re leaning toward, all I know is I’ve got one hell of a headache on my hands.”
; “Buy you a beer after work tonight?”
“I could use one right now. Sounds great, but I’m not sure when I’ll be finished.”
“I’m pulling a bit of a late shift myself, let’s touch base at the end of the day, no pressure,” Bobby said.
“Later, I better get back to this, thanks, man.”
* * *
“Bobby Custer,” he said answering his phone.
“Hi Bobby, it’s me, Emily Saunders.”
“Emily, hi, great to hear from you. How’s it going? How’s your mom doing?”
“As well as can be expected, she’s very strong, but she has her moments, we all do.”
“To be expected, Lizzy was that rare sort of person who lit up a room when she entered, we miss her.”
“Don’t we all. Hey, just wanted to say, well um, thanks for being so kind, so nice to my mom and her friends, the Graysons.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “Did they ever make it out of there?”
“Eventually, with some help. They’re long-time family friends.”
“Never enough of that. How are the feet?”
“They could use some attention if you’re asking.”
“Would they be happy with some dinner beforehand?”
“They would.”
“You free tomorrow night?”
“I’ll make sure I am.”
“You know the St. Paul Grill, downtown?”
“Yeah, in the hotel, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re kinda high class.”
He ignored her comment. “Would seven-thirty be too late?”
“Seven-thirty would be perfect,” she said.
“I’ll meet you there, that way if I say or do something awful you’ll have your car and you can just leave.”
“I can’t imagine you doing anything awful. I’ll see you at seven-thirty, tomorrow night.”
“Thanks Emily, see you then.”
* * *
