to make further chitchat, instead sitting and staring into some imagined faraway place where- maid service includedlow-rent mouth-oglers like myself were not admitted.
'Ah, Mr. Rainey,' came a voice behind me, and it was Marceno himself, a small man with a tanned face and dark eyebrows. As confident as he was rich, I thought. He set down his briefcase and shook my hand.
'I'm afraid that I'm not Jay Rainey,' I said, then introduced myself.
Mr. Marceno smiled poisonously, dabbed his fingertips together. 'Then you are the man who cost me so much money last night?'
I could see that the sum was a trifle to him. 'Yes.'
He waggled his eyebrows at Miss Allana, then returned his attention to me. 'Perhaps I should have hired you instead of Mr. Gerzon.'
'I was just trying to protect the interests of my client.'
'Of course. And why is your client not coming?'
'He had a sudden interruption.'
'I see.' He nodded again at the woman. Her disinterest in the conversation was painfully erotic. 'Yes, this can happen, yes. I am glad he sent his representative. Do you like the view, Miss Allana?'
This seemed some sort of romantic code, for she nodded and the mouth smiled the slow, wet orifice-dilation of a sea creature that senses nourishment might be near.
'Here is our problem, Mr. Wy-eth,' began Marceno after we ordered dinner. 'We bought the land that Mr. Rainey sold.'
'Well, he mostly swapped his land for your building.'
'Let me put it another way. The new owner of his land is a company called Voodoo LLC, yes? Very humorous, Voodoo.'
'Right.'
'We bought Voodoo LLC.'
'When?'
'Prior to the exchange of the land.'
'Was the exchange one of the conditions of your purchase of Voodoo?'
'Yes.'
'Why didn't you wait until the exchange was complete?'
'It was not necessary. We knew the exchange would take place.'
I nodded. 'So you bought the shell corporation that subsequently swapped its office building for a piece of land?'
'Yes.'
I still didn't get it. 'What do you know about Bongo Partners, which happens to be the listed owner of the Reade Street property?'
Marceno leaned back. 'It is not so complicated. Bongo owned the office building. They deeded the building into a new corporate entity called Voodoo. This happened only three days ago.'
'Which is why the deed change hasn't yet shown up downtown in the records.'
'Right. I see you checked.'
And I could see that he was being patient with me, that he had other matters to discuss. 'Let me be sure that I have it right. Bongo Partners, formed by a bunch of British investors, starts out owning the Reade Street property. It's a regular commercial property investment. They deed it into a new corporate ownership called Voodoo, then sell Voodoo to your company. Then Voodoo, which you now own, swaps the building for an eighty- six-acre farm on the North Fork of Long Island.'
'Yes.'
'Pretty ridiculous, isn't it?'
'Why?'
'Why didn't you buy the land outright from Jay?'
Marceno smiled with odd sadism and somehow I knew he thought me the fool. 'Because, Mr. Wy-eth, your client would not sell it.'
'I don't understand.'
'He would not sell his land, he would only exchange it for that building.'
I wanted to look at the woman's mouth but it would have distracted me.
'He wouldn't take dollars for the land?'
'No, he had to have the building.'
' That building in particular?'
'Yes. I frankly do not understand why he did the deal. The building is, well, just a little brick box. The land is forever. Grapevines are forever, Mr. Wy-eth. But then again, I am biased.' He looked at Miss Allana. 'I am a romantic, it is my flaw.'
She smiled and looked away.
'There was probably some tax benefit,' I thought aloud. 'If he sold the land first, he would have triggered a capital gains tax-'
'We looked into that,' interrupted Marceno. 'We figured that. We were even willing to make some kind of compensation for that.'
'What was the order of events?'
'Pardon me?'
'Who found whom first?'
'We were looking to buy acreage,' answered Marceno. 'We found Mr. Rainey's land. Then our sales agent told us the land was not for sale, not exactly. That Mr. Rainey would only swap it for a certain building. This was very unusual. We were told to approach the owner of the building, which was, as you have determined, Bongo Partners. Of course they had never heard of us or of Mr. Rainey. They were amused. They might have been thinking about selling the building. So, okay, they were willing to sell. Our lawyers advised that they deed it into a new corporation that we would buy. There are certain tax advantages for us that way, as well as liability protections. So we did that as fast as we could. We bought Voodoo contingent on our ability to swap the building for the land. It went through fine.'
'There was a hard-ass deadline for this deal.'
'We ordered Mr. Gerzon to get this deal finished, I will admit that. I don't know how he dealt with Mr. Rainey.'
Gerzon's pressure on Jay, in other words, had been real. 'Why the big rush?'
'Because we are very anxious to develop that property, Mr. Wy-eth. Every day counts when you plant grapes.'
'Do you have copies of these contracts?'
He reached in his briefcase, flipped me a small stack of documents. 'It's all there. Ownership of the Reade Street building passed from Bongo to Voodoo, then a day later to Mr. Rainey.'
'All this crazy legal paperwork because Rainey had to own that one particular building?'
'Yes.' And then, perhaps seeing my pensiveness, Marceno said, 'Now that I have given you an explanation, perhaps you can give me one. But first, let me tell you a little about my family, Mr. Wy-eth. We have been in the wine business for almost two hundred years. We are located in the Llano del Maipo region, near Santiago. We have a very good Cabernet Sauvignon, the Pinot Noir, and the Merlot. We are starting the Syrah, which you would call Shiraz. This is what we do. We practice controlled vineyard management. Extensive pruning to curb vigor.' He looked at Miss Allana. She smiled again and looked away. 'We want concentration of the fruit. We are careful about how we treat the land and the people. We are very careful with herbicides and pesticides. We are very lucky. In Chile we do not have the phylloxera epidemic. We can use French vines on French roots. Not French vines grafted onto American roots, like you have in California. We have been very successful. But we would like to branch out a bit. My family has maintained several apartments in Manhattan for decades now, it is a city that we love. And now we find the North Fork of Long Island very intriguing. We have started to hear that some very fine Merlots are coming along. The bottles are expensive, but the market is catching up.'
'What do you mean?'
'It's still expensive to make wine there, yes. The land costs are high, the vines need three or four years
