products and services—deciding which to invest in, which to milk, which to jettison. It’s a good consultant’s gig, to analyze the situation presumably free of biases, preconceptions or vested interests.
All she cared about was her report—a clinical analysis of the corporation’s financial and organizational health.
As long as she had the support of top management, she didn’t have to care if anyone liked her or endorsed her methodologies. She didn’t have to joke with colleagues, jolly along administrators or wish anyone a happy birthday. She didn’t care if you held the door for her or checked out her ass when you passed her in the hall. The job titles, perks and prerogatives, career ambitions, petty politics, personal dreams and paranoid fantasies of the company’s employees were no more important to her than the mindless behavior of a swarm of ants engulfing an orange peel on the sidewalk.
“Angel was interested in Con Globe,” said Amanda. “That’s the overlap.”
“A bold and trenchant analysis,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“No less so for my having considered it already.”
“Certainly not.”
“But Con Globe ain’t nobody’s target. The corporate charter won’t allow it.”
“Piffle,” she said.
“That’s Burton’s word.”
“Used advisedly. Burton would tell you that corporate charters are as substantial as cheesecloth, and not nearly so aromatic.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know Arlis Cuthright.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Donovan’s wife. Her family owns the largest block of Con Globe voting stock. Not enough to control, but enough to wreak havoc. She doesn’t care about the subtleties of corporate law. All she knows is Daddy wanted the company to stay intact in perpetuity, and bolstered by her interests in half a dozen other companies, she wouldn’t hesitate to tear Con Globe to pieces to preserve its independence. Most people think these big corporate decisions are based on calculation and greed. In fact, it’s mostly heart and soul. Raw emotion.”
“And greed,” said Amanda.
“And greed. Which is sort of my point. Marve Judson said some of the board members thought Donovan was trying to unravel the corporate charter. But why would he do that? What financial benefit could possibly justify a direct confrontation with most of the board, the executive committee and the controlling shareholders, who are controlled by his own wife? To say nothing of the legal implications and all the lousy press. Who in their right mind would do that?”
“Who said he was in his right mind? He was, after all, screwing his management consultant.”
“You say Donovan’s a fool in love, but does he have to be a fool?”
She took a sip of her pinot to help her readjust from scold to honored adviser.
“No,” she said. “He could string her along with delusions of financial conquest, if that was her game. Men have been known to do that sort of thing.”
“Can’t accuse me of that.”
“No, dear. Certainly not.”
“Or Donovan’s brain had simply migrated to his dick, just like any other poor idiot.”
“Rich idiot.”
I wondered, was that it? Was it that easy? Angel and Iku make a run at Donovan with a standard honey trap. They think they’ll be able to seduce, manipulate or extort him into breaking the charter, then set up a sale, before which Angel would have Phillip Craig take a big position, and subsequently they’d turn a gigantic profit. The ultimate special opportunity, and one that perfectly fit his modus operandi. Not just calling the play, but making it happen.
Iku’s angle? Money. Plain old money. And the rush of victory, like one she probably got from the oil deal. It’s impossible to overestimate how good something that big feels when you’re on the winning side.
Although she probably felt less victorious than Angel, at least financially. All she got from the deal was a paycheck, albeit a fat one, for her trouble. Nothing else would be possible without huge exposure to insider trading.
Was the Con Globe gambit a chance to make good on all that?
I shared all these thoughts with Amanda, whose focus had shifted toward a more fundamental question.
“What does all that have to do with people trying to kill you?”
Until that night, no one had ever tried to run me off the road and shoot me. At least not at the same time. It didn’t seem like much of a coincidence.
“I don’t know,” I said.
They finally threw us out of the joint, politely enough. Eddie was still alive when we got back to the car—and filled with his usual elan. I let him bark and run back and forth between the two lowered back windows all the way to Oak Point. Amanda held her thick hair to the nape of her neck and rode along in a fugue state of resigned indulgence.
I drove past my cottage and directly to Amanda’s house, bypassing anyone who might be waiting for me with a gun. I just wasn’t in the mood.
I walked Eddie around Amanda’s yard on the end of a rope, and after a foolishly tense search of her house, settled us in for the night.
Only Amanda and Eddie got fully settled. I stayed up and killed a dusty half-full bottle of Maker’s Mark from her sadly under-stocked liquor cabinet and brooded in front of the fireplace.
Ordinarily I’d attribute the wakefulness to nerves. But despite the fearful carnage of the evening, I was more angry than frightened. I’m always offended by the arrogance of people who think killing other people is a legitimate undertaking. I wonder, how do you get up in the morning and think to yourself, “Gotta do some errands, wash the car, and if I can fit it in, permanently snuff the lights out of someone’s beloved husband, brother, mother, sister, son”? I’ve never considered myself more deserving of life than the next guy, probably less, but at least take a second to think about it.
Altruism didn’t come naturally to me, but it was easier to apply this line of reasoning to Iku Kinjo than to myself. No willful murder is justified, but hers felt less an act of butchery than a surgical elimination. A tactical execution.
Maybe that’s all it was, a simple transaction. A line item on the profit and loss statement. Case closed. Meeting over. The ultimate hard stop.
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING my case for avoiding a physical exam was compromised by my inability to move without wincing or crying out in pain.
It was those damn ribs, pre-softened by Angel Valero.
So the first part of the day was spent in the tender care of a house-sized Jamaican trauma doctor named Markham Fairchild, whose bedside charm barely compensated for an obvious lack of sympathy.
“I tell you no more bangs to de head, and what do you do?” he said, looking down at me as they slid me into a thumping MRI.
“I didn’t bang my head. Just the rest of me.”
“Let me and dis machine be the judge of that.”
A few hours later I was back with Amanda in her pickup with a bellyful of lectures and a pocketful of prescription painkillers, none of which I intended to use.
“Can’t take the side effects. Rather have the pain.”
“Then give them to me,” said Amanda. “Fair compensation for all the chauffeuring.”
Our next stop was the Southampton Town Police, who were politely withholding the APB in anticipation of my prompt arrival.
Officer Orlovsky was way off her regular game. She called Ross without an argument and said please when
