$200 And A Cadillac - By Fingers Murphy Page 0,129

shit like that. Computer stuff, right? He was a sophomore or something at UCLA and he’s the one who turned his dad onto the Internet thing. Don Vargas took one look at that, saw what its potential was, and he started pouring money into it. Vargas was one of the first guys, hell, maybe the first guy, to do things like put cameras in a sorority and broadcast it over the Internet.

“When I first met him, he had a warehouse out in the Valley that he was building these little sets in. You know, a shower room, a gym room, a bedroom, a hot tub room, and he was going to put women in them and have Internet peep shows. That’s what he first came to talk to me about. It was really brilliant. He was way ahead of his time. It was years before the technology really caught up with his ideas and made it possible for him to do everything he really wanted to do.”

Stanton laughed and rolled his chair over to a file drawer along the wall. He opened it up and flipped through some files as he spoke. “The funny thing is, you’d never have guessed the guy was an innovator by looking at him.” He pulled a booklet from a file, got up, and handed it to me. It was a press release from a pornography conference in Las Vegas.

“There’s a picture of him on page three,” Stanton said as he sat down again. “I mean, he was a sleazy looking guy. Gold chains, big rings, the whole deal.”

I opened the booklet and saw a Rodney Dangerfield looking guy grinning out from the page. The caption below the picture read: Don Vargas, a thirty-year veteran of the Adult Entertainment Industry, says, “Everyone loves to fuck, but only a lucky few make money at it.” I smiled and handed it to Jendrek.

Stanton said, “Ridiculous right? But that was how he was. And let me tell you, he made a lot of money. He has about twenty companies doing everything from making movies, to making sex toys, to running an Internet empire. It’s brilliant. He cross-sells everything. It’s unbelievable really.”

Jendrek said, “So all these businesses, who’s going to run them now? If he was the brilliant guy behind everything, is there a successor? A board of directors?”

Stanton shook his head. “No. See, that’s the problem. Vargas was a wheeler-dealer kind of guy. He had his hand in everything and ran it all fast and loose. No boards of directors, no shareholder meetings, none of that shit. He owned and controlled everything. It was all Vargas all the time. It was a very mom and pop, homegrown kind of thing. No formalities. No strategic plans. Nothing like that. Hell, Vargas didn’t even have a will.”

I said, “You’re kidding me? What’s this guy’s estate worth?”

“It’s hard to say. Vargas might have been worth a hundred million.”

“Dollars?” Jendrek almost gasped.

Stanton nodded very seriously. “Yeah. I don’t know the exact number, but what I do know is that California is a community property state, which means whatever it’s worth, it all goes to his wife.”

“So Ed Vargas is out in the cold?” Jendrek chuckled at the cruelty of it.

“Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, someone’s got to run these companies and Ed is the logical choice. But with Tiffany owning everything, Ed’s just another employee. They’ve never gotten along before, I doubt this is going to improve their relationship.”

Jendrek and I glanced at each other. I was thinking about Ed Vargas’s comment about what had been done to him and it suddenly made a lot more sense. I could see Jendrek was thinking the same thing.

Stanton cleared his throat again. “This is made even touchier by the fact that Ed has really been the one running the Internet companies. And lately, he’d been pressuring his dad to go ahead and transfer ownership of those companies to him. Don was ready to do it. We were drafting the documents this week. Don’s plan was to transfer ownership to his son before the end of the year.”

Stanton let his words hang in the air for a few long seconds. Jendrek leaned forward and set the press release on the edge of Stanton’s desk and said, “So Vargas the younger has lost out on a sizeable chunk of dough?”

Stanton said, “That’s an understatement. With the explosion of the web, the Internet business has grown exponentially over the last ten years. Everything else has been flat, or has actually declined in value. The Internet business is now far and away the largest revenue generator in the Vargas empire. Tiffany Vargas could always go ahead and complete the transfer to Ed, but something tells me she won’t.”

Jendrek asked, “Was Ed aware that his father was going to transfer ownership?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. He’d been pressuring his dad to do it for a long time. They were both in here just last week looking over some documents.”

“So Tiffany Vargas is the beneficiary of the cop’s stupidity.”

“I’d say that’s about right.” Stanton smiled.

On the way out we stood around in the lobby waiting for the elevator. I could tell Jendrek was thinking things through when a soft ding signaled that our ride was there. We stepped into the elevator and I could see his eyes focus on the bright colored painting hanging on the opposite side of the elevator bank.

“Is that a real Picasso?” he asked, as the doors closed.

I said, “Of course. Only the best around here.”

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This is a work of fiction. While certain characters, locations, or situations depicted herein may resemble or be based upon people, places, or things in the real world, their use herein is entirely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or things, living or dead, is either coincidental or used solely to create verisimilitude. Basically, if you think this book is about you, someone you know, or someone you have heard of, you’re a moron.

Table of Contents

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Preview: FOLLOW THE MONEY

Preview: THE FLAMING MOTEL