"That's who's running it. We could sure use the help. One of our main inside men just went down."
"Okay, I'll do the best I can," he'd said.
He phoned in sick and chartered a plane, which she said she'd reimburse him for. Stuart had flown up to San Francisco with all of the equipment he could carry. Victoria had next phoned the FBI. "Let me talk to Grady Hunt," she said, and in a minute he was on.
"So far so good," Grady bragged. "Everybody's in town, Tommy and your boyfriend are at the Ritz. Whatta you want?"
"You said I had to call, so I'm calling."
"Then gimme something I don't know, like where's the old duck with the gray hair going? He got on a plane for New Jersey. I got a team set to pick him up in Atlantic City."
"John Bates is going home. Don't follow him, his wife is dying. He's out of the play."
"Boo-hoo and whoop-de-do," Grady said.
"Don't follow him, okay? He's just going to sit at the hospital with his wife. I'm meeting a guy tonight named Stuart Bates. He doesn't know what's going on either. He's doing me a favor, so don't jam him up. He's not part of it."
"Nobody seems to be part of it," he said. "We got a first here, a crime with no criminals."
"I'll call you in the morning before it goes down," she said, and hung up on him. What a jerk.
She'd picked Stuart Bates up at the airport at eleven-thirty, and they had gone directly to a motel that was a few blocks from the Big Store. He'd asked for a room with a bathtub. Once they were inside, he had insisted that she take off all her clothes. She had hesitated, but then thought, What the fuck, and threw caution and her clothes away. She stood naked before him. He looked at her beautiful body and tried to decide which areas to pad.
"I'm gonna give ya the cellulite transformation, a big stern, and thunder thighs," he said. Then he handed her a robe. He poured three bags of plaster of Paris into the tub and had her sit on a chair in the bathroom with her head tipped back in the sink while he made a face mold.
"Okay," he said, "I'm going to give you body padding. I brought some in the huge suitcase. Try it on; we'll probably have to tailor it, but you'll wear it under clothes so it should work. Your hands are going to be tough, a real giveaway. Hopefully, he won't look at them too closely. We'll get a pant suit for you to wear, with pockets. Keep your hands in your pockets to hide them. I don't have time for the hand appliances. I'll do chin, cheeks, and neck. You can look through that suitcase for a wig."
They had started at twelve-fifty in the morning, and seven hours later the sun was up, and he was just applying the finishing touches. She was sitting in a motel bathroom four blocks from the Perm Mutual Building while he fine-tuned the eye makeup and powder-dusted the glued-on appliances. She watched in fascination; he had transformed her into a fat, middle-aged woman with three chins. In high school, Victoria had developed a very funny imitation of her history teacher, Miss Laura Luna. She had been rather large and had a breathy but slightly squeaky voice. Victoria needed a new persona so that Tommy wouldn't recognize her. She decided to resurrect Miss Luna.
Stuart had picked up some size 15 clothes and she had selected a dark blue pant suit, with pockets. It also hid the leg and stomach padding, which were held on with Velcro. The whole contraption weighed over thirty pounds.
She was sweating under it as she cabbed the four blocks to the Penn Mutual Building and took the service elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor. Her FBI tail didn't recognize the woman who hurried past them to the cab stand. Instead, they stayed and watched the empty motel room. She dashed into the President's office just two minutes ahead of Beano and Tommy. Now, with almost no time to get set and settle down, she was face to face with Tommy Rina.
"I'm sorry, I can't meet with anybody right now," Victoria told the ugly mobster.
"Hey, lady." Tommy took a menacing step forward. "Who the fuck you think you're talking to?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," she said, in her breathy soprano. "I've never seen you before in my life. But I'm going to insist you leave my office or I'll have to call Security. I'm preparing for a meeting with our million-dollar shareholders and I only have a few minutes to review Mr. Lacy's notes."
"I own a million dollars' worth a'this oil company," he said, and he yanked open his briefcase and thrust the stock certificates at Victoria.
She looked at them." This is only a hundred thousand shares. The stock is trading at just under six. That means the market value of these certificates is only about six hundred thousand."
"The fuck," Tommy said, "y'mean I'm still losing money?"
"Please leave my office," she said insistently.
Beano pulled Tommy aside and whispered to him, "If the stock goes down, that's good for us. Means we can buy more for our money. Forget the first million," he whispered, "we're talking about billions."
Tommy pulled back and looked at Beano. Finally he seemed to connect to that. He nodded.
Beano thought he needed to slow the pace slightly. He had never played a mark who had less understanding of business. "We're interested in buying control of this company," Beano said to Victoria.
"And just who might you be?"
Beano thought Victoria's makeup was a bit too heavy. At one spot, it looked like it had been put on with a trowel to cover the neck appliances. Then Tommy said something to Victoria that jerked him back.
"Don't I know you?" he blurted. "We met someplace before?"
"I'm sure not," Victoria asked.
"Yeah… yeah, I'm sure. Florida? You ever been to Florida?"
"What do you mean, you want to buy the company?" she said, abruptly changing subjects. "That's hardly possible at this point."
"Miss Luna, is it?" Beano said and she turned to him. "I know you've got a bunch of angry stockholders convening here this morning. These people want their money back. I happen to know they all hold Class-A Preferred Stock, same as Mr. Rina here. And somebody, some insider, must be selling it fast to push the price down like this."
"I can't discuss insider business," she said.
"Now the other stockholders can't sell without flooding the market and driving the price to nothing. Since they're all stuck holding this plunging stock, I think they're going to want you to liquidate assets. If they vote this morning to do that, then you're going to have to start selling stuff like the Tennessee land, and if that happens on top of this falling stock price, even the Vancouver Stock Exchange is going to panic and freeze everything, maybe even de-list the security. You're in a horrible fix, Miss Luna. You should be treating us like saviors. We happen to be the only buyers in a market full of sellers," Beano grinned.
"I still don't know who you are," Victoria said.
"This is Mr. Rina, a respected businessman. I used to work here until I was fired for doing my job. I'm a geologist, Dr. Douglas Clark."
"Oh, yes. Seems to me I read that termination slip. So now what's your story? You trying to buy the company and teach us all a lesson?"
"I'm trying to offer a solution, not a lesson."
"I'm sorry, but I don't think selling you the company at a distressed price is a very good business solution… at least, not this morning. As the corporate CFO, I'm empowered to negotiate deals for FCP amp;G, but I hardly intend to take advantage of that power until Chip Lacy gets better and can offer his opinion."
"What's she saying?" Tommy asked, leaning forward in his loafers like a railbird at the Aqueduct finish line.
"I happen to know this company is falling apart," Beano exploded at her, losing his temper. "You people haven't been bringing in new wells. Your field development costs are killing your cash flow. You haven't even been paying your bills. Don't stand there and preach to me about good business solutions."
"I think you need to get ahold of yourself, Dr. Clark. You were fired for meddling in a financial matter that was not your concern. Now, obviously, you're harboring the fantasy of buying us and firing everybody to get even. Revenge and retribution? Is that the plan?" she said, her voice rising in indignation to match his.