friends of mine back east this morning. They think this company went bankrupt in the late seventies.”
“Bankrupt in the seventies?” Beano sputtered.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy this eventually, just slow down. Joe never buys stuff quick. He always says, ‘If there’s a clock anywhere in the deal, then let the buyer beware.’”
“Joe says that?” Tommy asked.
“If this is an up-and-up deal, it will be for sale tomorrow or next week. You don’t have to buy it now. If you insist, we can negotiate an option today, preserve all your rights, and then, after I’ve checked it out, we can let go of the cash.”
It was a solution that would never work for Beano. Alex would surely discover the fraud if given enough time to investigate. Beano had to up the stakes…. So, he moved back to Ellen’s desk, borrowed a pencil, and wrote a note for her while Alex was slowly getting Tommy to reconsider.
“What’s it matter if you buy it today? Look, big purchases don’t happen like this. You don’t roll in with a suitcase full of cash and plunk it down. That’s insane. Do it the way Joe would do it. Do it smart.” Alex had finally found the right tune to play, and Tommy was listening and nodding.
Beano handed the note to Ellen. She read it and stood up. “You can wait in Mr. Spencer’s office while Miss Luna gets the approval for you to attend the meeting,” she said, as she showed them to a nearby office.
They entered and looked out of the huge plate-glass window. Across the street, the Exxon double locking x’s were shining. Ellen left them in the office and closed the door. Then she handed Beano’s note to her husband, Steve. Rig a chill and play the cross-fire, the note read.
There was a computer in the office where they were waiting. Tommy watched as Beano turned it on and booted it up.
“I’m telling you,” Alex went on relentlessly, “we can hold our dirt. If they’re really in cash trouble, time is working for us, not against us.”
Beano had the Quotron stock report up, and he motioned to Tommy and Alex.
“Look’t this,” he said, and he punched in FCP&G and they watched the stock ticker report. “This stock was trading at ten yesterday, this morning it’s down to five and seven eighths and whoa, no … look’t this …”
Tommy leaned in and, as they talked, he saw the stock drop from five and seven-eighths to five and three-fourths. Again, Victoria’s program had overridden the real Quotron ticker, and Fentress County fell right before their eyes.
“This fucking thing is dropping faster than a bad tit job,” Tommy said, glaring at the screen.
“Mr. Rina,” Beano said, “I don’t mean to stand here and argue with Mr. Cordosian, brilliant in legal matters as I’m sure he is, but I’ve been in the oil business for fifteen years. This stock is about to get frozen by the Vancouver Exchange. An insider is obviously dumping stock without notifying the Board. They’ve gotta be looking at this. A stock goes from ten to five and three-quarters, loses almost half its value in one day, and you don’t think the Exchange is gonna stop trading and delist it? Once that happens, we are absolutely out of the game. Maybe your brother thinks if there’s a clock in a deal there’s a problem, but I’m sure he wasn’t contemplating a foreign stock exchange taking the whole transaction out of our hands. We have one hell of an opportunity here. But we’ve gotta suck it up, be a little brave, and move now.”
Then the door opened and Ellen Bates stuck her head in. “Miss Luna says you can join the stockholders’ meeting. It’s on the floor below, in the big conference room. I can show you down.”
Tommy picked up his briefcase and they all followed her out of the office to the elevator.
The stockholders’ meeting was more of a shouting match than a meeting. Miss Luna, a.k.a. Victoria Hart, was trying to maintain some control, but the Bates point-out players were screaming at her and each other.
“You can’t be serious!” Leonard X. Bates was shouting. “If we don’t make a move now, take this into our own hands, we’re going to get frozen. One or more of us is selling and killing the market for everyone else. We have to move now, Laura. Sell the Tennessee land, dispense the assets. I understand we have a buyer on that property.”
Everybody started talking