Porter quoted me was ninety thousand under the appraisal I paid for.”
“Okay. I’m beginning to see what’s going on in your mind. We have our own appraisers. Everything we own is appraised on a regular basis so we don’t get raped by the tax collector. When you told Porter you wanted to buy that house, he called me and said this should be the one exception to The Rule. And I agreed.”
“ ‘The Rule’? What rule?”
“The family buys property, but never sells it. We lease it, sometimes by the year, sometimes by the century, but we never sell it. I agreed we should break The Rule for you and Hanni. You’re more than friends—you’re family.”
“Ninety thousand under its appraisal value?”
“You’re going to have to trust me on this, JP,” Lowell said. “When I told him, sell it to JP, Porter called our appraiser and asked him what was on the books. Whatever figure Porter quoted you was the figure he got from our appraiser. We’re a bank, not a benevolent society.
Portet looked at him for a long moment.
He took his wallet from his pocket and handed Lowell a business card.
Gresham Investment Corporation
J. Richard Leonard Vice President
Suite 1107 27 Wall Street New York City 10022 212 555-9767
“What’s this?” Lowell asked.
“You don’t know?” Portet asked.
“No. I never heard of them.”
“I really want to believe you, Craig,” Portet said.
“I never heard of these people, okay?” Lowell said coldly. “Where’d you get it?”
“At the airport in Miami,” Portet said. “I’ve been going over there to see what’s available on the used-airplane market, maintenance facilities . . . you understand.”
“And?”
“This fellow came up to me while I was having a coffee—not in the terminal, across from it, in the cargo area. He knew who I was, called me Captain Portet, and said he heard I was at the airport, and that it was a fortunate coincidence, because he had been thinking of contacting me in the Congo.”
“He say why?”
“He said that he ‘and his associates’ were on the edge of setting a charter company, half a dozen convertible 707s; that they were not happy with the people they’d been looking at to manage it; and that a search had come up with my name as someone with just the experience they were looking for. My long-haul jet operations, between Europe and southern Africa, and my short-haul piston operations in the Congo area, he said, were just about what they wanted to start up between the States and the Far East—I think he meant French Indochina, Vietnam. If I was interested, they were prepared to really talk seriously about it, and were prepared to offer me participation, which I took to mean a substantial piece of the company, plus a salary ‘commensurate with my background.’”
“It sounded too good to be true, right?”
“I had talked to Porter Craig about buying into a small airline,” Portet said. “Yeah, Craig, it sounded too good to be true.”
“My first reaction is to tell you that Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes does not employ people to wander around airports looking for people to loan money to,” Lowell said. “People come to us, usually on their knees. But sometimes Porter does go overboard. And we own Twenty-seven Wall Street, and that piques my curiosity.”
He pulled a telephone out from under the bar and dialed a number from memory.
Portet could barely hear someone answer the telephone.
“The Craig residence.”
“Hello, Stephen, is my portly cousin there?”
Lowell held the telephone away from his ear so that Portet could hear the conversation.
“What can I do for you, Craig?”
“Give me a straight answer. Have you been trying to help Captain Portet with his plans to buy an airline? Straight answer, please, Porter.”
“I would be happy to, but when I offered to help in any way I could, he politely but firmly told me no, thank you. I have respected his wishes. Does he want help now? Has he come to you?”
“What do you know about the Gresham Investment Corporation? ”
“I never heard of it.”
“How about a guy named J. Richard Leonard?”
“I don’t know the name.”
“They have offices in Twenty-seven Wall.”
“So do a hundred other firms. That’s a large building. I never heard of them, sorry.”
“Who can you call to find out?”
“If it’s important to you, I’ll make inquiries in the morning.”
“I mean right now.”
“Good God, Craig! For one thing, it’s after business hours.”
“This is important, Porter.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“See how much space they have, who they gave as credit references. That should be on the