*****
“This guy, your investor… you said his name was McDonald? I’ve never seen a contract like this.” Cleveland Jowers set a pile of papers in front of them.
“We warned you.” Clay responded. He and Alec had been waiting for him in the conference room.
“I’ve seen thousands of contracts, written many myself, but never one with so many… well, traps… pitfalls.” Cleveland sat and pulled a handkerchief from his suit’s vest pocket to wipe his face… more from habit than need as the air conditioning worked fine after Eugene repaired it. “Do we have a chance?” Alec asked. Being an engineer, the documents were meaningless to him… even to Clay. That’s why they hired one of the best contract lawyers in the country as their Chief Operating Officer.
“I believe you do, it’s a slim one but definitely doable.”
“You’ve found them all? I mean the traps.” Clay furrowed his brows.
“Not to sound arrogant, but I am the best there is, better than the one who wrote this… much better.”
“So what did you find?” Clay asked opening his laptop.
“Let’s start with timing. The payments must be made ON the specified date, not BY the date.” Cleveland pushed a copy of the contract in front of them. Alec read a highlighted paragraph… meaningless to him.
Clay finished typing into his laptop and looked up. “Which day?”
“I’ll get to that later. The payment must be made through a bank transfer. Representatives must be present at each party’s specified location during that transaction.”
“OK, that’s not a big deal.” Alec smiled.
“Did I forget to mention, that if we fail to meet any of these conditions, we forfeit.”
“Oh.” Alec’s smile faded.
“Anything else?” Clay said as he typed.
“Yes, you need to completely buy him out. The 50 percent return on investment payment is a ruse and would just activate more traps.”
Clay looked up from his laptop. “That means we need fifty million dollars, not the twenty-five as we thought.”
“Twenty-five, fifty, a hundred… what’s the difference?” Alec put his head in his hands.
“So, if we can somehow get our hands on fifty million, what other problems do you see?” Clay said stone faced.
“Well, it’s not the individual elements, or clauses of the contract. The trap is in how they’re combined.”
“OK, lay it on us.” Alec picked his head up from his hands.
Cleveland cleared his throat. “First the date of the transfer; it’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving.” He stood and smoothed his suit jacket. “The caveat is that the banks must be open for the transfer to occur… and most banks are only open half days on Saturday. I took the liberty to check the hours of your bank and found it is closed that day.”
“We can always get another bank, right? And we do have a half a day… a 4 hour window.” Alec said hopefully.
“What about the locations?” Clay asked. “You said there needed to be a representative at each party’s location.”
Cleveland smiled and nodded at Clay. “I believe you see what I see. The contract specifies a 24 hour notice as to where their location is.”
“So that’s the trap.” Clay stood slapping his hands.
Alec looked confused. “What trap, 24 hours is plenty of time, we can just charter a plane and keep it on standby. I’ve seen companies do that before.” Clay and Cleveland stared at Alec. “OK… what don’t I get?”
“You tell him.” Clay said to Cleveland.
“The locations can be in different geographic time zones. It is possible that the time can be 2, may 3 hours apart. That leaves us a 1 or 2 hour window. Any problems or delay and the transfer fails.”
“So, all we need to do is get our hands on 50 million dollars.” Alec said deflated.
“The expo is next week and our car is just about ready.” Clay answered.
“But, we haven’t been able to sell anything. I don’t get it, everyone, I mean everyone loves our anti-gravity… then those odd legal issues happen and they run scared.” Alec grumbled. “It’s got to be McDonald, he must be involved somehow.”
“Alec, haven’t you wondered why we’ve only tried selling flying toys up till now?” Alec grinned.
“Uh… no… why?”
“I… we.” Clay nodded to Cleveland. “…were a little suspicious that McDonald might try sabotaging our sales.”
“And we found him to be quite resourceful. It seems he has a lot of pull with… well with the powers that be.” Cleveland added.
“So, what good is having a ‘Gravity Expo’, if we know McDonald will just sabotage us?” Alec asked.
“We are inviting the most powerful people of the transportation industries; automotive, aerospace and even the military. I doubt if McDonalds influence reaches that far.” Clay closed his laptop.
“So have we had any replies to our invitations?” Alec relaxed a bit.
“Olivia has them.”
“Maybe we should tell her about McDonald.” Alec said just as she entered the conference room.
“Tell me about what?”
“Oh, just some theories about why we haven’t sold anything yet.” Clay answered before Alec could.
“I’m sure there just as good as all the other theories.” She said setting her laptop on the table. “Oh, I just got back from that storage room. Those kids of yours had a bit of an accident there.”
“Are they OK?” Alec asked.
“Oh they’re just fine. Looks like a light bulb burnt out and gave Jessie a scare.” Olivia sat and opened her laptop. “I just wonder how those kids keep getting into all those secured rooms.”
Alec and Clay grinned as they began going over the guest list for the Expo.
Alec's Dream Page 3
