Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“A tomato juice would be great,” Nick told him.

“You surprised a great many people, you know,” Hutch went on. He popped the cocktail olive into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Have to keep my strength up,” he added with a wink.

“What happened has been hard for everyone. A lot of good people have been hurt. I’m very aware of that.”

“You misunderstand,” Hutch said. “I didn’t mean about the layoffs. I just meant that not everyone took you to be CEO material. A solid company man, absolutely. But not quite cut out for the corner office.”

“Well.” Nick looked around, taking in the fieldstone fireplace, the white tablecloths, the red patterned wall-to-wall carpet. “I guess Old Man Devries—”

“It had nothing to do with Milton,” Hutch said sharply. “If he’d wanted to, Milton could have named you president, or chief operating officer. One of those next-in-line positions. That’s the custom with a corporate heir apparent. He did not choose to do so.”

“Fair enough,” Nick said, trying not to bridle.

“He was fond of you. We all were. But when the issue came up, well...” Hutch peered into the watery depths of his cocktail. “Milton considered you a little callow. Too much of a big-man-on-campus type. Someone too concerned with being popular to be a real leader.” He looked up. “Thought you didn’t have the killer instinct. Now there’s one heck of an irony.”

Nick’s face was hot. “Being that you’re such a connoisseur of irony, you might enjoy this one.” He unzipped his black leather portfolio and presented Hutch with the contract that Eddie had taken from Scott’s e-mail.

“What is this?”

“You tell me.” If you’re not too drunk to make sense of it, Nick thought.

Hutch reached for his reading glasses, convex lenses with wire frames, and started paging through the document. A few times he tapped on the pages and gave a dry chuckle. “My, my,” he finally said. “I take it this isn’t your masterwork.”

“Not mine.”

“Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: Stratton hath need of thee.” Hutch put his reading glasses away, and made tsk-tsking sounds. “Pacific Rim Investors,” he said, and then: “I can’t even pronounce this name — is it Malaysian? Good Lord.” He looked up, bleary-eyed. “So much for the match made in Heaven. Looks like your white knights came riding in from Boston only to sell Stratton down the Yangtze River.”

Nick explained what Stephanie Alstrom had told him about the real owner being the Chinese P.L.A.

“Oh, that’s rich,” Hutch said happily. “That’s really a thing of beauty. Though it’s not exactly sporting to put one over on the Communists like that these days, is it?”

“Put one over?”

“If these balance sheets are authentic, then Stratton’s doing marvelously well. But I have a suspicion they’re as phony as a glass apple.”

Lipstick on a pig, Nick thought.

“If I had access to your most recent P and L statements, and if I weren’t three sheets to the wind, and if I actually cared, I could give you a breakdown of this document that was so clear even you could understand it.” He took a swallow of his drink. “But even in my current condition, I can tell you that somebody’s been coloring outside the lines. For one thing, you’re taking your reserves against losses from your last profitable year and using it to cover over the new tide of red ink. That’s ‘cookie jar’ accounting, and we both know about that company that got caught doing it not so long ago and had to pay three billion dollars in damages to make it all better. It’s not nice to fool with your accrued liability.”

“What good is that?” Nick said. “Once the new owners find out the truth, they’ll hit Fairfield with a huge lawsuit.”

“Ah, but you see, that’s the beauty part, my boy. They can’t sue.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a clever non-litigation clause here,” Hutch said, tapping the paper. “Once the deal goes through, no lawsuits are permitted over any representations and warranties made herein, ya de ya de ya.”

“Why in the world would the buyers agree to that?”

“I think the answer is manifest,” Hutch said, looking up again. “It’s in the side agreement. Guaranteeing a seven-figure payout to someone, no doubt a Chinese government official with the ability to speed through the acquisition.”

“A bribe.”

“You put it so harshly, son. The Chinese have a wonderful tradition of giving red envelopes of hong bao — good-luck money — to start off the lunar new year right.”

“Ten million dollars is a lot of good-luck money for one man.”

“Indeed. But to grease a deal like this through the Chinese bureaucracy without endless quibbling — well, that’s quite a bargain, isn’t it?”

“It’s early for Chinese New Year, isn’t it?”

“Now you’re catching on. Unless you can think of some other reason why Stratton would be routing him his money to a numbered account in Macau. From where, I’ll wager, it was immediately transferred to another account at the Bank of Commerce of Labuan.”

“Labuan?”

“Labuan is an island off the coast of Malaysia. A speck of sand, and a great big offshore financial services industry. The bankers of Labuan make the Swiss seem gabby . Basically, it’s where Chinese kleptocrats like to sock away their ill-gotten gains.”

“I had no idea.”

“I’m sure they were counting on that. Good boys and girls don’t know about Labuan. And they certainly don’t wire money there.”

“Christ,” Nick said. “How many people are in on this thing?”

“Impossible to say, though it only takes two countersigners to execute it. One corporate officer — that would be your charming young CFO — and a managing partner from Fairfield. It does seem a little low-rent, the whole thing, but I suppose these are two young men in a hurry. There are a lot of people in a hurry these days. Sure you won’t join me in a drink?”

“Still waiting for my tomato juice,” Nick said. “Seems to be taking an awfully long time.”

“Oh dear,” Hutch said in a low voice. “I should have realized. Doubt it’s ever going to come, Vinnie being your waiter and all. I guess you must be used to this sort of thing.”

“What are you saying?”

Hutch glanced at the waiter and shrugged elaborately. “It’s just that you laid off his brother.”

Audrey tracked down Bugbee on his cell phone at the Burger Shack, the place he liked to go for lunch. He could barely hear her. In the background was a cacophony of laughter and clinking plates and bad rock music.

“When are you coming back?” she said several times.

“I’m on lunch.”

“I can tell that. But this is important.”

“What?”

“You’d better get over here.”

“I said it can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” she said.

“I’m at the Burger Shack for the next—”

“See you there,” she said, and she hung up before he could object.

Bugbee quickly got over his pique at having his lunch with the guys — three uniformed officers, all around his age — interrupted.

He excused himself, and he and Audrey found an empty booth.

“That’s it,” he said when Audrey told him about the weapon match. “We got ’em.”

“It’s still tenuous,” she said. “It’s circumstantial.”

He glared. There was a large splotch of ketchup on his hideous tie, which only improved its appearance. “The fuck are you waiting for — Nick Conover’s diary with a special entry for that night saying, I plugged the guy, me and Eddie?”