Glenn Patterson - Gull

So when the call came from LA with news of another deal in the making, Randall was relieved as much by the buoyant note he struck as by the prospect of the financing package: buoyant enough to be taken in another, less abstemious person for booze-assisted. The words were coming out faster almost than Randall could take them in. There was a consortium, though — Randall got that: entirely American — he got that too, several times, their Americanness was a big, big part of the attraction — and ready to invest tens of millions of dollars ‘within weeks’.

‘But, Edmund, none of this yet to Prior or his people, not until I have all my ducks lined up.’

A voice somewhere else in the room said, ‘Quack-quack’, which was the first that Randall knew, in all the time they had been talking, DeLorean was not alone.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had company.’

‘Oh, that was just Jim being funny. You remember Jim Hoffman?’

Randall swallowed a yelp. ‘Is he part of the consortium?’

‘He sure is,’ said DeLorean, ‘and a damn fine job he is doing too, aren’t you, Jim?’

‘If you say so, Captain,’ Hoffman said. Whatever about DeLorean, Hoffman had definitely been drinking, and not a little either. What time was it there? Three? No: two in the afternoon. Captain, he had called him. Captain.

Randall was unable to settle to anything at all for the next several hours. ( Captain… No other way to say that but with a smirk.) In the end he did what he ought to have done the first night he had seen him in the lobby of the Sheraton Universal.

Hal Lewis who had sat once upon a time at the desk next to his at the Chicago Daily News was working now at another Daily News , over in LA, keeping real well, real well, thanks, he said when Randall rang him, enjoying the weather a lot more on the west coast, that was for sure… But what about Randall, had he stuck with DeLorean? Hard times there, Hal heard.

Yes, Randall had stuck with the company, and, yes, things had been kind of tough lately, but that wasn’t what he was calling about.

‘I need a favour,’ he said.

‘Shoot,’ said Hal.

‘I’m trying to find some information on a guy, James Hoffman — Jim. Has a business partner by the name of Morgan Hetrick.’

‘What’s he done to you?’

‘He hasn’t done anything. Just someone I met here in Ireland told me he was related and wondered if I had ever come across him, you know the way Irish people are, they think America is a village.’

‘That’s your official reason?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not a very Irish name. Hoffman.’

‘He’s not a very close relation. Probably how come they lost touch.’

‘I’ll see what I can do… Not promising anything, you understand.’

‘Of course,’ Randall said.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Hal rang back.

‘That person you met in Ireland will be pleased to know that long-lost cousin Jim has been doing very well for himself indeed: him and his partners. Business contacts far and wide, though mostly far, if we take far to mean up and down as opposed to wide’s side to side.’

‘And by up and down you mean…?’

‘Mostly down: south of the border.’

‘Mexico way.’

‘And beyond, quite a bit beyond.’

‘That’s certainly interesting.’

‘And all perfectly above board, I hasten to add.’

‘Should I be detecting a hint of sarcasm?’

‘No, that one is straight… Whatever insinuations anyone might try to make.’

‘Thanks,’ said Randall. ‘I hear you better now.’

For two days after that he did little else but write and rewrite the script of the next conversation he needed to have. It rose up in his mind like a mountain that he had to surmount: it would be his triumph if he succeeded, but if he put a foot, or a word, wrong there would be no second chance, that would be him, gone.

So: a question mark next to that word, a line through that… Do not for a single moment allow the thought to form that you have gone behind his back.

He was still tussling with the big reveal (‘My pal Hal rang looking for a quote about the October nineteenth deadline…’?) when DeLorean, mistiming his cue, phoned him.

‘Edmund, I’ve got it, the answer to all our problems.’

‘You have?’

‘I’m just through telling Don, I wanted to let you know myself… a company in London, connected to Lloyd’s, they’re in for one hundred million — tax-haven money — the Brits know all about it, seems they don’t mind havens as long as they are the ones benefiting. We pay them off straight away, we clear our debts and we still have money to upgrade the plant, invest in a huge new PR campaign: sedan, right-hand drive, twin-turbo…’

‘If I wasn’t actually speaking I would say I’m speechless.’

‘I know. We have to put up twenty million of our own before it can go ahead, but I’m working on that as well.’ There goes the ranch for sure now, Randall thought, the estate in Bedminster too, perhaps. ‘I’ve been talking to some people out in Virginia, I think they will be good for the loan.’

Another loan. ‘You think they will be?’

‘Know. We’ve as good as shaken on it.’

Randall could have wished they had actually shaken, but at least the government was backing this plan, and at least Hoffman and his consortium had been jettisoned along with all the other fleetingly sure things. Of course DeLorean had to explore every offer that came along, and if that meant carrying on for a few hours like an old drinking buddy of some unsavoury character then so be it. Randall felt guilty for having doubted. He put his script in the garbage and put Hal’s call right out of his head.

Cork showed up at the plant at the start of the week with Jeanne Farnan, one of those ‘people out in Virginia’, willing to make the twenty million dollar loan. She did shake Randall’s hand, with a surprisingly strong grip. Everything about her, in fact, suggested a reassuring firmness of purpose. Even her hair seemed set.

She and Cork shut themselves away in an office for most of the morning. Peggy, who brought them in coffee and cookies from the canteen, reported that there were papers all over the desk and floor, barely enough clear space for her to set down the chocolate teacakes. When she went in later to lift the leavings, of which there were few, the papers had all been tidied away again and him and her, Peggy said, were sitting laughing and joking, which had to be a good sign, hadn’t it?

Lovely teeth she had, said Peggy. All the women ‘over there’ had but, hadn’t they? ‘My husband used to say they’re made out of different stuff from ours… Joking, like,’ she added in case maybe Randall hadn’t worked it out himself.

*

The American woman and Sir Kenneth Cork stopped in the assembly shop to talk to the workers, who emerged from inside and underneath cars — as though from inside and underneath shelters — at their approach. News of her good humour as she and Cork were winding up business in the office (and of her teeth, of course) had gone before her. What had not — Peggy, the bearer of those titbits not having been privy to any of the actual conversation — was her evident knowledge of the car itself, which she displayed now in a series of questions on everything from tolerance variations in the fibreglass to how the bonnet — hood to her — was bonded to the frame.

‘Here, are there stripes across my back?’ TC asked when they had moved on to the next interrogation. ‘I feel like I’ve just been grilled.’

‘What do you think?’ asked Liz, ignoring him. ‘Is she the real deal?’