* * *
I bought a ticket to Boston. Time to see the old man.
Chapter Thirty
I didn’t bother to make an appointment, as I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get one. Besides, the only card I had left to play was surprise, and I would need it if I had any thought of winning this hand. Pickering and Sons had moved, so I gave the cabbie the address and he dropped me off on the curb. Modern, trendy, the building reflected Marshall’s desire to remain relevant as well as Brendan’s desire to wrest the company away from him. Fat chance. The conflict between the design and the artwork was thick enough to cut with a knife.
The receptionist’s smile quickly turned to a frown as I walked past her toward the suite of extravagant offices. There were three. Amanda on the left. Brendan on the right, across the hall. Both doors were shut. Marshall’s door stood open in the center. The receptionist offered a verbal protest, but when I ignored her and walked past her, she began quickly dialing. It was too late.
Marshall sat behind his desk staring at one of his three screens covered in numbers that measured the value of his world. He was smiling. He’d aged but he’d aged well. Still trim. Fit. His hair had turned completely white. He stood to meet me. “Charlie, you should have called.”
Friendly as ever, he walked around the desk to shake my hand with his right and pat me on the shoulder with his left. His smile said one thing, the coldness in his eyes said another. He called past me, “Amanda. Brendan.” I heard a noise behind me as both Amanda and Brendan walked in. Brendan had plumped up a bit. Amanda had not. She walked up and hugged me, kissed me on the cheek. Amanda was as beautiful as ever, but she, too, had aged and the years had not been kind. She looked older, less vibrant. She, like her father, looked cold. Pilates, yoga, personal trainer, whatever, she’d obviously done them all and it showed. As did the plastic surgery both above and below her neckline, which did not mask the sadness beneath her eyes or in her chest. I almost felt sorry for Brendan. A decade “in the family” and the whipped look on his face told the story. He’d been conquered and, like a dog pulled on his collar by his chain, had become Marshall’s yes-man. His face was rounder. Belly, too. Bags beneath his eyes. I acknowledged him but did not offer to shake his hand. “Gunslinger. How’s that moving target treating you?”
He laughed an embarrassed chuckle.
Marshall attempted to cut the air. “What brings you to Boston?” He waved his hands across the plush sofa behind me. “Please, sit.”
I did not.
I’d played with this man enough to know that he was still and always better. I really had only one play, and it would be my first, as I wouldn’t get a second. I needed to catch him a bit off guard, I needed to pick a fight, and I needed to go all in, all in the same move. “Cinco Padres Café Compañía.”
One of the things that Colin had discovered for me was that during the foreclosure, the shell companies for Pickering and Sons had ended up with the deeds to Cinco Padres. I thought those deeds had been sold on the courthouse steps, but when the Cinco Padres companies were closed, all assets were not sold but transferred to Pickering. Aka, to Marshall. Where the deeds collected dust with more than a hundred other companies. Though I had not known this until Colin dug it up in his research, I’d be willing to bet it had been Marshall’s plan all along.
Marshall attempted to look like he didn’t know what I was talking about, but the old man had aged and his bluffs weren’t quite as polished. Or maybe the time away had seasoned me as a player after all. He scratched his chin and nodded, attempting to act as if the cloud were clearing and the fog lifting. “Seems like I remember something about some coffee and Central America. Nicaragua maybe.” He turned to Brendan. “What do we know about Cinco Padres?”
The two-word shortening of the name told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. A check and a raise. Brendan walked behind Marshall’s desk, punched several keys, and the screens quickly changed. He scanned them and then began reciting values like a robot. He finished with his assessment, which Marshall neither wanted nor cared about. “Dead weight. No production. It’s a total of five farms and the dirt is worth more than any possible coffee production as those ignorant people have never recovered from the mudslide that put them out of business in the first place—along with that stubborn old man who, I imagine, wishes he had sold now. Might find a possible buyer in a rum company looking for sugarcane soil.”
Amanda sat across from me. Legs crossed. The beginnings of a slight smirk. She was enjoying herself. Marshall leaned on the front of his desk, one leg to the side, his foot off the ground. The total value of his suit, shoes, and watch was hovering around two hundred and fifty. He spoke to Brendan while never taking his eyes off me. He knew the answer without asking. “And what’s the value of that dirt to the right buyer?”
Brendan checked his screens. “Five. Maybe six.”
Marshall considered his cards. Then raised. “Seven.” The smiled spread across his face as he expected me to fold. I paused and turned to Amanda, who shook her head ever so slightly. Marshall saw something he must not have liked in my eyes because he raised again. He tapped the table. “Closing in seventy-two hours.”
I stepped toward Marshall into his personal space—which he did not like—and extended my hand, shaking his firmly. “Deal.”
I walked to the door and turned to stare at two ashen white faces and one smiling. Guess I don’t need to tell you who was smiling.
I returned to Miami and knocked on Colin’s door. I had three days to find a lot of money. I had about half in the bank. I still owned my childhood home across from the beach in Jacksonville. My shack in Bimini. And I felt I could get a loan from Colin, but I needed to do some digging first. Zaul answered the door, shadowed by Colin. “Was wondering if you felt like flexing those muscles.”
“Sure.”
Two hours later, Colin, Zaul, and I walked into the San Angeles Catholic Chapel on the northern tip of Bimini. They’d ceased services here decades ago and now used the chapel only for weddings. It was tucked into the trees but backed up to the beach just a few yards away. Making sure we were alone, Zaul and I slid the stone altar out of the way and began hacking at the floor with an ax and a pick. The double layer of boards beneath the tile were solid, reminding me that when I’d buried this money, I’d buried it. Zaul swung with an apparent glee at the thought of tearing something up and finding money. He smashed through the floor and there beneath sat my duffel bag and my $250,000. He unzipped the bag. “Good thing I didn’t know that was here until now.”
I smiled.
He was stepping out of the hole when I pointed at the concrete below him. He shrugged. “More?”
“Let’s just call it a hunch.”
Zaul began breaking up the concrete while I sat on the front pew and remembered my friend Hack and how he loved cigarettes and a good cup of coffee. When Zaul’s pick smashed through the floor into a cavity beneath him, he looked at me with wide eyes. I told him, “Be careful. I’m not real sure what’s down there.”
An hour later, Zaul had unearthed four large trunks. “Jamaican Rum” had been stamped on the top. We lined them up and pried off the top of the first. Zaul’s jaw dropped. “That’s a lot of money.”
The other three were just like it. Colin smiled. “Always loved that old guy.”
Zaul looked up at me. “What’re you planning on doing with all this?”
I smiled at Colin, then Zaul. “How would you like to learn the coffee business?”
* * *
After seventy-one hours and fifty-three minutes, I pushed a cart carrying five duffel bags into Marshall’s building and rode the elevator to the top. The receptionist didn’t protest as I walked by. Marshall was standing at the window. Three men in suits I did not know sat busying themselves with a pile of papers at the conference table. I pushed in the cart prompting Marshall to acknowledge it and then me. Amanda and Brendan followed me in.