Kate reached into the trunk and refolded a pair of Mack’s shorts. Mack and Sarah were in the pool.
“The Prodigal returns.” Peter’s voice was gentle.
“I’d hardly call it returning. I suspect I’ll only be here long enough to get the kids on the bus and to do my own laundry.”
She paused. “Two days. God, what I wouldn’t give for the luxury of spending two full days not thinking about anything but the four of us. But with what happened in Boulder, I’d be surprised if I weren’t in Barcelona by the middle of next week and spending every minute before getting ready for the meeting.”
“Another trip? Does that mean the deal is moving forward?”
“Maybe this one is a gift. As long as we’ll be empty nesters beginning Saturday, are you up for a little tapas?”
“Tapas before rice and fish eyes? Sounds like fun. But it sounds expensive.” He pointed toward the Gien bowl. “And to make matters worse, I’m afraid I’ll be spending what remaining time I have left in this country holed up with lawyers.”
Kate leaned her head to the left and wrinkled her brow. Peter explained, “We received a
billet doux
from the good gentlemen at Carter and Foster while you were in Colorado.” Peter’s sarcasm hardly masked his revulsion.
Kate walked to the counter and picked up the complaint the Ascalon shareholders filed against the Board and Kate and Drake and Greene, complaining about everything imaginable. It was sixty pages of breach of this and gross negligence of that and of Peter letting Kate have her way with Ascalon.
She skimmed the first couple of pages and hissed the words
crap
and
idiots
.
Kate put the complaint down. She was depressed enough from the email barrage that assaulted her when her flight from Denver landed at La Guardia. The boys—that’s how she now was referring to the unholy triumvirate of Ed, Steve, and Clive—spent the four hours she was on the plane picking apart her decision to meet with Marta Hirsch and railing about what balls it took for Chris to ask for that kind of money.
“All of them choked on the idea of the bridge loan, but nobody has either a silver bullet or some investors up his sleeve who’d look the other way on the authenticity of the painting.” Kate took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. “Ed needs this deal to keep moving forward so he can stall Harvard’s threat to withdraw from our venture fund. Don’t be surprised if he starts calling early tomorrow to find out why it’s taking so long to make arrangements to see Marta Hirsch. This deal is like sandpaper on my brain.”
Peter was writing Mack’s name on the bottom of his sandals with a red magic marker. “Maybe something good will come of the meeting. We’ve earned the right to get some good news.” He looked at the magic marker as if he were waiting for it to agree with him. “Haven’t we?”
Kate sighed. “I’m beginning to forget what good news is. I’d be happy just to stop sliding backwards. As for the meeting, if it happens at all, I don’t expect anything to come out of it. In fact, I fear it will be a disaster because none of them will let me offer up the proposal I made to Chris.” Kate rolled her neck around in circles. “We’ll be dancing around the one thing we need to talk about to make any progress.”
She picked up the complaint and read a few more pages. It struck her as precisely the kind of toxic cocktail of innuendo and suggestion seasoned with wild speculation Karl warned Peter would be in his future. She put it down after a minute or two. “These guys are on drugs.”
She lowered her voice a notch. “Listen, Peter. As long as we’re talking about people who make stuff up, Steve Reed is threatening to call you and accuse me of sleeping with Andrew and who knows what else to get up the ladder at Greene.”
Peter put down the iron. He shook his head at what she’d just said. Kate explained their confrontation before she left for Linz. “He’s using that as blackmail to get me to follow a game plan he cooked up about how I was supposed to pretend I turned over every rock on the planet to find some heirs to the man who bought the painting so we then can jam it into our prospectus. And now that I’ve found someone who might be related I suspect he’ll use the same threat to get me to do something else. The man is reprehensible, but Ed protects him no matter what he says or does. It goes against their grain not to test their opponents’ weaknesses. I can’t win no matter which direction this goes.”
Kate flipped over the last page of the complaint. She then put it back in the Gien bowl. “Well, that certainly was an uninspiring read.”
Kate sat on one of the stools at the counter, kicked her shoes off, and rubbed the ball of her right foot. “I suppose I should apologize because they sure tried to pin this mess on me, but I can’t find anything close to the truth in there so I don’t know what to apologize about.”
Kate feared Peter’s next comment would be about Andrew Butler, but it wasn’t. He took a step back. “I’m told there are more charges on the way. Cass and I’ve got three days of full-body cavity searches lined up next week with the lawyers for our D&O carrier. You even need to be there at the Monday morning session.”
That was an invitation she’d just as soon throw into the trash, but she said she’d be there.
“Karl tells me that after all their poking and probing they’ll deny coverage anyway. But one piece of good news, at least, is that Cass and I are all square and the money was sent to the bank,” Peter said.
Kate was relieved to hear that. She took the magic marker out of his hand and put his arms around her back. She leaned her head against his chest. “I’m so sorry, baby. I know how much you’re hurting. I can’t stop those lawyers from spreading their venom, but tell you what. As long as we’re both in the dumps, let’s forget all the bad stuff in our lives for a couple of hours after the kids go to sleep and treat ourselves to an Ike and Tina. We haven’t had one of those in way too long.”
They had code words for their lovemaking back when Peter was starting out at GE and Kate at Citicorp. A Jack Welch was corporate, hierarchical, formalistic, and a bit dull. A Sandy Weill was a bit better but still on the low end of the scale. They had gradations all the way to Ike and Tina.
Even guys who call time-out in their marriages can’t resist an Ike and Tina. Peter looked at his watch. It was seven-twenty. “Sarah, Mack, get out of the pool. Time for bed.”
Kate began folding a pine-green and white Camp Kiawah sweatshirt with its newly pressed label. She touched the end of Peter’s nose with her left index finger. The idea tickled her that for a few hours later tonight neither one of them would have to worry about disgruntled shareholders or stolen paintings or places in the middle of nowhere or out-of-control bosses.
TWENTY-ONE
Kate and Peter eventually had to climb off each other, Sarah and Mack finally got on their busses to camp. The alarm went off at six Monday morning, and they had to meet with the lawyers for Ascalon’s insurance carrier.
They took the train into the city together. Peter was quiet the entire time, but not the nose buried in the
Wall Street Journal
or
Times
crossword kind of quiet. His was more of a looking out the window, wondering if this is really happening to me kind of quiet.
National Mutual’s offices were in a small, dark hallway in a dreary building on Lexington near 41st that should have been torn down long ago.
In the twenty-seven months of its existence, Ascalon paid National Mutual three and a half-million dollars in premiums. For that, it got a bald ex-Marine prosecutor from Thomasville, Georgia named Fritz Banner with bushy white eyebrows and a perpetual scowl, Bill Lawrence, a string-bean of a guy who was the starting forward for Seton Hall for two years and who had the crazily annoying habit of writing with five different colored pens in some form of code Kate couldn’t quite break, and Monica Kwan, a stone-faced junior associate whose vocabulary seemed to be limited to the phrases, “oh, really?” and “that’s troubling.”
Fritz asked Andrew Butler to sit through the session. He had been running late, so there was no time for introductions. He took the seat next to Kate and squeezed her right hand with his left as a way of saying hello.
Fritz spread all of his fingers on the table as though he were getting ready to spring across it. “It came out in the Amigo bankruptcy hearing on whether an examiner should be appointed to look into Jack Carpenter’s use of corporate funds when he flew Kate to Pittsburgh last November to visit her mother on Amigo’s Gulfstream Four.”
Fritz looked over the top of his reading glasses. “Wanna tell me about that trip?” Fritz’s drawl was so heavy it seemed to take two full seconds for him to get the word “wanna” out of his mouth.
Life support. I feel terrible having to say this over the telephone, but I’m not sure how much time she has. Do whatever you can to get here.
Thinking about the call from the nurse in the ICU made Kate want to walk away from the table for a minute, but she needed to stay focused.
Bill wrote the question in green ink. He shifted a red pen to his right hand waiting for the answer. Kate leaned forward, almost as if it was her job to shield Peter from this onslaught, but Fritz said he wanted Peter’s answer.
“Kate was Jack’s banker. She made him millions, probably tens of millions. Kate’s mom had a heart attack. Kate wanted to be with her as quickly as she could. I saw it as a gracious act for an old business friend.” Kate was relieved the meeting was underway without any slipup.
Monica handed Fritz a few pages that appeared to be a transcript from a court hearing. “Question: Mr. Carpenter, please tell the court the business purpose of that trip. Answer: We were in an acquisition mode at the time. Ms. Brewster’s husband ran a B2B services company that was a perfect fit. This gesture not only gave me a first look at Ascalon but pushed me so far ahead of the competition I effectively had an exclusive on the deal. Question: What happened to the merger discussions? Answer: To the best of my recollection, Amigo was prepared to pounce on the opportunity, very likely at a premium above market, but it was delayed on account of circumstances out of our control.”
Kate shook her head at the absurdity of the comment. Jack was making things up to protect himself from his creditors.
Fritz then picked up the shareholder complaint before Kate, Peter, or Andrew had a chance to say anything. “Quote. Brewster’s wife intentionally delayed merger negotiations that began months before the market collapse for the sole purpose of enhancing the book of business she would offer Drake Carlson, with whom she was having secret negotiations.”
Fritz handed the pages back to Monica with some delicacy, drawing every ounce of drama he could out of the gesture.
“Peter and Andrew, I’ll start with you. Does either one of you care to tell me how we defend against the charge that your wife—” Fritz glanced at Kate. She showed no reaction. Fritz paused and then looked to Andrew. “—and your partner at the time sabotaged a deal that—if Mr. Carpenter’s numbers are to be believed—would have paid your shareholders somewhere in the range of twenty-seven dollars a share for her own personal gain?”
Monica moved closer to the table. This was the knock-out question, the one that would allow National Mutual to point to the exclusion in the policy saying it didn’t insure against self-dealing by any of Ascalon’s insiders, leaving Ascalon’s board members naked.
Andrew lifted his hand slightly to signal Peter to let him speak first. He pulled the cuffs of his shirt out of his jacket sleeves so his oyster shell cufflinks were visible. He folded his hands slowly, the way a magician might cup a ball hidden in his palm. It was as though he’d been waiting for this moment since Columbia handed him his MBA.
Kate had seen this a million times before, the artful way Andrew could be certain every eye was on him before he plunged his dagger into his opponent’s heart.
“Jack Carpenter is a sweetheart,” Andrew said. His voice had the certainty of which Kate had become accustomed. “I love the man dearly, Mr. Banner, for several reasons, not the least of which is that he made Greene Houseman millions, but he’s lying to save his own skin. The last thing in the world Jack needs is an examiner poking around Amigo’s books. He ran the place like his private piggy bank. Besides, nobody ever offered Ascalon anywhere near twenty-seven a share in cash or Amigo stock or pineapples. We may have a liquidity problem at the moment, but we’re not dumb enough to say no to a deal like that.”
Bill wrote Andrew’s answer in black ink. Even the part about the pineapples.
Fritz moved in his chair. “Nice try, Andrew, but Jack Carpenter’s not on trial here. You are.”
Fritz was every bit as skilled as Andrew in drawing out a scene. He let his comment linger before turning toward Peter and saying, “I don’t expect you to throw Kate under the bus, Peter, but how do you answer that question?”
Peter had gone off with Karl Maxwell for an hour’s worth of coffee and bagels not long after Sarah and Mack were on their way to camp on Saturday morning and Kate’s tears were dry. Kate was about to learn how valuable their time together had been, for with Ascalon unable to pay for any lawyers, Karl was Peter’s only guide through this thicket of innuendo.
“I’m not surprised Jack gave that testimony. What else could he say under those circumstances? But it’s a gross overstatement to say Amigo either had a leg up on other bidders or a fully formed proposal. Andrew is correct. Jack never even asked for the most basic due diligence. Twenty-seven dollars a share means we were worth a little over four hundred million. Wouldn’t you ask a few questions before spending that kind of money, Mr. Banner?”
Kate reached across and touched Peter’s arm. Let the plaintiffs throw all the mud they could ball into their fist. The morning was going well. Fritz didn’t know any more about Jack Carpenter’s bid than what he’d read from Jack’s testimony and what Peter had just told him. If he didn’t give the facts a chance to be played out, Peter would have no trouble finding his own vulture to turn the table on National Mutual with a bad faith claim.
Kate contained a smile, but she would find a way to celebrate this moment.