Due Diligence: A Thriller (22 page)

“The stock price’ll come back,” said Stanzy, still gazing at the bullpen. He turned back. “It’s the
Herald
. No one believes that crap.”

“Why don’t they hold off with the deal until their next filing? Reassure the markets they didn’t pump the results this time around. Make the lenders happy.”

“Hold off?” said Stanzy in disbelief. “They’re hot for it. What are you saying? You want me to tell Wilson to hold off?”

Golansky nodded.

Stanzy stared at him, speechless.

Golansky broke into a grin. “That’s what that moron Rubinstein suggested to me.”

Pete Stanzy laughed, more out of relief than amusement. Hold off on a deal? You never did that. You never, ever, ever let a deal go cold. No matter how good it was, no one would come back to it. People did deals because they were hot for them. Every other reason—synergy, strategy, whatever you wanted to call it—was secondary.

“Fuck Rubinstein,” said Golanksy. “If he had his way, we’d never do a deal.”

“So we’re gonna do it, right? You’re gonna get the bridge?”

“I told you, Pete, I want this as much as you do. We need this deal. This bank doesn’t execute something like this soon, we’re all screwed.”

“So?”

“We got half from Citi,” said Golansky. “I’ve still gotta find two-point-one. I’m just telling you, Pete, it’s not gonna be a walk in the park.”

“But you’ll get it, right?”

Golanksy didn’t reply to that. He frowned, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

Pete Stanzy watched him. He wondered just how close Golansky actually was to telling Stanzy to go look somewhere else for the debt, which would kill the whole thing as far as Dyson Whitney was concerned. In the long run, Golanksy had to live with Bruce Rubinstein. If Bruce was whispering in the Captain’s ear against Dyson Whitney getting involved in funding the deal, John would carry the can for anything that went wrong with the debt further down the line. The charges would be laid against him personally. No matter how much Golansky wanted to fund the deal—and he did, Pete Stanzy truly believed that—there would be a point at which the personal risk became too great, and he’d walk away.

“Pete,” said Golansky, “you know the firm was going to raise part of the bridge on its own account?”

Pete Stanzy nodded. “A hundred million, right?”

“Is there anything I should know? Really?”

“Nothing.” Pete smiled, and he watched Golansky, trying to figure out how close the other man was to walking away.

21

Rob let himself into Emmy’s apartment.

“It’s Saturday,” she said, watching him come in. “What’s wrong? You work on Saturdays now, remember?”

“I thought I’d come back and catch you with your lover,” joked Rob.

“If you left it much longer, you probably would have.”

Work in the war room had finished early. Sammy had needed Rob and Cynthia to crunch some numbers to go in the loan document he was preparing for John Golansky. Other than that, he just wanted to be sure they knew what they would be looking for when they got to London for the due diligence. By noon, Rob was done.

“Had lunch?” he said.

Emmy shook her head.

“Don’t tell me. You were gonna have corn chips, right?”

Emmy grinned. Corn chips were her staple. There was always a cupboard full of them.

“Come on,” said Rob. “I’m buying.”

They went to a deli and got a couple of bagels. Then they headed for the park. It was a warm, breezy October day. For a while they just walked, holding hands. It felt like a long time, an awfully long time, since they had had the time together to do that.

A group of joggers went past, unbunching into a line as they went around them.

“So, what’s been happening in your world?” said Rob.

“Ah, well, no multibillion-dollar deals, funnily enough.”

“Okay,” said Rob. “I guess I had that coming.”

“We lost out in the auction.”

“Oh.” Rob looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

“We found out yesterday. That novel’s going to be huge. Honestly. Caitlin and Andrea both agree, but Fay wouldn’t bid up past fifty thousand, which was way too low.”

Caitlin and Andrea were two other editors who shared Emmy’s office.

“So that’s what you bid? Fifty?”

“Forty-five, actually. Doesn’t matter, anyway. We lost it to HarperCollins.”

“How much did they offer?”

“Not sure. Possibly six figures. We can’t compete with that, but the author really liked us. If we could have gotten some way toward it, she might have gone with us.”

“That’s a real shame,” said Rob.

“Fay’s too timid. You’ve got to have faith in your convictions. Sometimes you’ve got to be prepared to go a little further when you really think you’ve got something special. That’s how you build a great list.”

“But she’s built a list.”

“Yeah, but … we miss out on stuff. Not only because we can’t pay top price, but because sometimes we’re not even prepared to offer what we can afford. I mean, I know this must sound like peanuts to you. You’re talking in millions, and for us it’s a few thousand here or there.”

“Well, that’s the business,” said Rob. “That’s what it is. Doesn’t matter what the size of the sums is.”

“It’s not about money,” said Emmy. “I wish it wasn’t, anyway.” She shook her head. “I would have loved to edit that book, Rob. I know exactly what I’d do. Damn it! It’s honest, it’s real. It’s what I want to be in publishing for.”

“Is there any chance it might come back?”

Emmy shook her head. “It’s done. It’s gone now. Those things don’t come back.”

They walked on in silence.

“So, what about your world?” said Emmy. “Nowadays, I don’t seem to hear anything about it.”

Rob shrugged.

“Nothing?”

He didn’t reply. He had spent a long, fitful night thinking about what had happened in Pete Stanzy’s office the previous afternoon. It was still eating away at him.

Emmy looked at him knowingly. “What is it? There’s something, isn’t there?”

He hesitated. “You ever read the
Herald,
Emmy?”

Emmy laughed. “If you want to insult me, just tell me I’ve got a big ass.”

“You don’t have a big ass. You have a perfect ass.”

“I’d rather have a big ass than be known as a
Herald
reader.”

“There was a story in it yesterday,” said Rob.

“Well, that’d be a first.”

“About us.”

Emmy glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“There was a story about how Dyson Whitney’s working with my client.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s meant to be a secret.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a story,” said Emmy. “Must have been a slow day.”

“It said more. It said our client isn’t very sound. It implied there’s some fancy footwork going on. The stock dipped quite a way. That’s a problem when a deal’s going on. That can really hurt them. It’s the kind of thing that could stop the deal cold.”

“Do you believe it? This story?”

Rob didn’t reply.

Emmy stopped. “Rob? Do you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You mean you think there really is something going on?”

“It’s possible. I don’t have any proof. It’s just a suspicion.”

“What makes you suspect it?”

“Things. There are a few things. Red flags, they call them. Things that are supposed to make you suspicious.”

“And they do?”

Rob hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Well, if that’s what you think,” Emmy said, “you need to bring it up with your boss.”

“I did.”

“And he said…?”

“He said, ‘Yeah, right.’ Emmy, these guys…” Rob thought of Pete Stanzy. And Phil Menendez. “You’ve got to see these guys. When this story appeared yesterday, you know what they thought? They thought
I
leaked it!”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because of those things, those red flags, because I dared to say something about them. That’s the way they think. I was the one who mentioned it, so I must be the one who went and leaked this stuff about the client’s honesty. That’s their logic.”

“And did you leak it?”

“Of course not!” Rob looked at her in surprise. “What do you think? I wouldn’t even know how to do it.”

“You’d just ring up a newspaper, I guess. It couldn’t be too hard.”

“Well, I didn’t ring up any newspaper. I just…”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He hadn’t said anything to that journalist. Whatever she knew, she knew before she spoke to him.

They sat down on a bench facing an area of open grass. People were having picnics. There wouldn’t be too many warm days left this year.

“They were going to fire me,” said Rob.

“What?”
Emmy stared at him.

“Pete Stanzy, he’s the MD, he was going to pull me off the team. Said he couldn’t trust me. Said he couldn’t have someone he couldn’t trust a hundred percent. Who’s going to want me after that? That happens, I’m dead in that firm. I’m dead in the business. I get kicked out after eight weeks, who’s gonna want me?”

“Could they do that? Could they fire you just like that?”

Rob shrugged. “Why not? What was to stop them?”

“So are you still on the team?”

“Yeah. I told him I didn’t leak the story. I told him I’d never do that. I told him he can trust me to the hilt, all I care about is the client. It’s like being a lawyer. I’ll do whatever it takes to do the best for my client.”

Emmy nodded.

“I tell you, Emmy, I begged. I’m not proud of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“You were asleep.”

“You don’t tell me anything, Rob, do you realize that?”

“I’m sorry. It’s all meant to be secret.”

“From me?”

“You wouldn’t say anything, I know that.”

“Then why don’t you tell me anything? What are you doing? Protecting me? If you can’t even…” She stopped, shaking her head in frustration.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Emmy. I’ve been working so hard, I don’t know if I can even think straight.”

There was silence.

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Rob paused. “It wasn’t pretty, Emmy. Seriously, I’m not proud.”

Emmy watched him. Eventually she sighed. “Rob, you’ve worked for this. God knows how hard you’ve worked, everything you’ve sacrificed. Two whole years. I don’t care if you begged for your job. You did the right thing. You don’t deserve to lose it over some ridiculous suspicion.”

“The other night you said you didn’t think this job would satisfy me.”

“I had no right to say that. It’s what you want and you worked to get it. You deserve it. So what are you going to do, walk away and let them destroy you? You stood up for yourself.”

Rob wasn’t so sure he had stood up for himself. “Rolled over” might be a better description.

“I’m proud of what you did,” said Emmy. “You understand? I’m proud you fought for your job.”

She wouldn’t be so proud if she had been there to see it, thought Rob. He wished he could blank it out. He couldn’t think about the conversation in Pete Stanzy’s office without cringing. Physically cringing. And to think about the way he had come out of there, as if he had won some kind of big victory, as if he had come back from the dead … he wished he could put it out of his mind, draw a curtain over it, put it someplace and forget it had ever happened.

But it had happened. He had spent a long, sleepless night replaying the conversation, every word he had said and everything he had done, as if he had to keep punishing himself for it and the only way he could punish himself enough was to replay it over and over and over in his head. And each time, he felt physically sick at the thought of it.

He didn’t think of himself like that, like the person who had sat in Pete Stanzy’s office the previous afternoon and begged for his job. That wasn’t the image he had of himself. He’d let go of everything. Principle. Decency. Self-respect. It had taken him all of a minute. In another minute he would have been down on his knees.

It was disgusting. Craven, cringing capitulation. When he thought about it, he felt as if he were seeing himself in a mirror for the very first time—his true self, his real self—and what he saw was enough to turn his stomach.

And yet, he was almost certain now that something really was wrong at Louisiana Light. It wasn’t the way they had pumped their revenues to get their stock price up. And it wasn’t the level of the bid, or the size of the fee they were willing to pay, or any other red flag. More than any of those things, it was that speech Pete Stanzy made. All that stuff about the great American business that had gone wrong but could still be put right. All that stuff about not needing another Enron, another Stanford Bank. It had forced its way out from inside of Stanzy, from whatever warped sense of morality was left within him after fifteen years in the business. That’s how it had seemed to Rob, when he was lying open-eyed in the darkness, thinking about it. It came out against Stanzy’s will.

Why? Because Pete Stanzy knew something about Louisiana Light, or at least suspected it strongly. He must. There was no other way to understand his need to say those things.

Pete Stanzy had sold his soul, and when he said those things, he was looking for a way to rationalize it.

But was
he
any better? It had taken Stanzy fifteen years. It had taken him all of eight weeks. The very first time he had been required to take a stand, he had failed. All that mattered was his job. At that moment in Stanzy’s office, he would have done anything, said anything, promised anything to keep it. Nothing else counted.

And was he still going to do nothing, just quietly go about his work, even though he was almost certain now there was something wrong with this client? Wouldn’t that make him as bad as Stanzy? Was he really going to do nothing?

But what could he do? He had already spoken to Stanzy, and Stanzy had almost kicked him out.

He watched one of the families having a picnic on the grass. The father was kicking a soccer ball with his two kids while the mother sat on the picnic blanket peeling fruit. One of the kids, Rob could see, had Down syndrome. The two kids took turns kicking the ball.