Insiders (23 page)

‘Hey, if we're going to put out that much, let's really do something with JRU once we own it,' Tyler said.

‘Well, of course we will,' I told them. ‘Isn't that the point? We'll make this a far better facility. We'll actually train and rehabilitate those who are willing and capable.'

‘That wasn't exactly what I was talking about, Mom,' Tyler said. ‘I meant make some money with it.'

‘Are you certain you should risk everything you own on this scheme?' I asked Jennifer.

‘You are,' Jennifer countered. ‘Anyway, I might not have to sell it, yet.'

That was true. ‘But I'll never leave here, Jennifer. You,
on the other hand, will need a place to go to. I'm never going back to that house anyway,' I said. ‘And if selling it can make life in here a little bit better – not only for myself but for everyone else – well, I really have nothing to lose, except the money.'

‘We'll call it the Jennings Estate for the Criminally Rich,' Tyler said.

‘Yeah. Milken, Boesky, Trump, maybe Leona Helmsley,' Bryce said.

‘Great. The campaign can be, “You don't have to be a felon to live like one.”' Jennifer smiled.

‘It would definitely be a gated community,' Lenny contributed, totally straight-faced.

‘One of the biggest concerns I have is how I am supposed to communicate with you. I mean, it's not as if you're my lawyers and can show up every day,' Jennifer inquired. ‘And they monitor the telephone calls from the pay phones.'

‘We can set you up with a Palm Pilot with a communications option. Get you the newest and smallest laptop or perhaps a cell phone that can be linked to the Internet. But then our problem is getting them to you,' Bryce said.

‘None of this is without risk,' Jennifer told them. ‘But it can be done, can't it, Maggie?'

‘Sure, if we're careful. We'll ask Movita. She'll figure out a way and we'll let you know what to do,' I told my boys.

I was worried not for my sons' investment firm, but for Jennifer Spencer. I saw the look in Bryce's eyes as Jennifer and that accountant shared their plot of prison takeover and reform. Bryce was a dreamer – a trait that he had inherited from his father. But Bryce was a ruthless and manipulative dreamer – traits that had gotten his father a bullet between the eyes. I hoped that I wasn't watching
anything starting here, and that Jennifer Spencer would not someday want to murder my son, but it seemed to me that the chemistry between them as they concocted this scheme in the hour of a prison visitation could lead to nothing but trouble.

During my time in the prison library, I had listened to some pretty bizarre plans as inmates desperately tried to research new ways to beat the system. For myself, I harbored no hopes of beating the system. I had stopped the boys from their constant attempts at appeals, throwing good money after bad. I was in prison for life, and, as the old adage put it, ‘If you can't beat ‘em – join ‘em.' Experience had taught me that ‘joining ‘em' was a whole lot better than ‘killing ‘em'.

As Jennifer Spencer and ‘Son Number Two' enthusiastically spun their web of intrigue and revenge, I couldn't help but wonder how different my life might have been had I been born into this new generation. Up until now, it had never occurred to me that instead of ‘join ‘em' or ‘kill ‘em', ‘buy ‘em' might actually be a delightful way to beat your enemies at their own game. Seeing the glint in Jennifer Spencer's eyes made me feel young again.

The narrower the cage, the sweeter the liberty.

German proverb

On the nights when Byrd wasn't on duty after lights-out Movita would work her charms on the officer filling in so that Jen and Movita could meet Theresa and hunker down in her house to go online with the slim, sexy laptop. Jen would hand over the memos, letters, and emails she had drafted during the day in the library, and Movita, who could type over a hundred words a minute, would get online and knock them out.

Bryce and Tyler did most of the negotiating with Tarrington for his share of the JRU stock and its options. In the meantime, Lenny Benson set up not one, but two significant loans for the financially strapped firm, but made sure that the small print gave the lenders not just veto power over financial decisions but also the ability to vote for board members. Bryce and Tyler became board members the moment the loans were delivered.

Both processes were fast and fairly simple; after all, Jen explained to Movita, it didn't take much to get people to accept an offer of free money. The next bit would be trickier. Normally they would not have needed a majority of shares to own a controlling interest in the company, but in this case more than forty percent of the issued stock belonged to Tarrington, who would take any questioning of his power badly. ‘We don't want to have to buy all sixty-two percent of the remaining friggin' stock. And by the way, you've got great eyes.' Bryce emailed her. Movita read the message too and just gave her a look. ‘We've named ourselves to the board, and with what Benson and you can manage to dig up we can probably unseat Tarrington, but that doesn't mean we want to spend more money than we have to control this fucker. Any thoughts?'

‘What the hell are they talking about?' Movita asked.

‘It's simple,' Jen told her. ‘You can sometimes control a very big company with a fairly small percentage of their stock if you can get other large stockholders to vote with you. If you know the holdings are really widely dispersed among a lot of small stockholders, then unless Tarrington can get ‘em all to vote with him, you can also get control.'

‘Okay. I got that,' Movita nodded. They were crouched in the corner beside the commode, over which Theresa had placed a cloth and a puzzle box so they could use it as a workstation. Tonight they were lucky because Officer Mowbry was patrolling the unit until midnight and she was too big and lazy to walk much. But even so, once in a while she walked past the cell and then Theresa signaled them. They had to be prepared to get into her bunk while Jen plastered herself under Theresa's bunk as close up against
the wall as possible. They crawled back together and Movita asked what else could be done.

‘Well,' Jen explained, ‘the only other option I know of is buying more of the privately held shares. Or setting the place on fire.'

‘What would that do?' Theresa asked. ‘Get insurance money?'

‘I was only joking,' Jen whispered. ‘I was trying to dramatize how important it was to get controlling interest of the stock. I could still sell my condo,' she murmured. ‘Lenny tells me it would raise about half a million dollars after I paid off the broker and the mortgage.'

‘Girl, ya' got a half a million dollar crib?'

Jen tried not to smile. In Tribeca a half a million dollars bought a one-bedroom apartment, but there was a limit to the economic lessons she was going to teach tonight.

‘You gotta keep your home,' Theresa said firmly. ‘You're young and you're not going to be here forever.'

‘There has to be some other way,' Movita said.

‘There sure does,' Jen sighed. ‘Because half a million dollars wouldn't do much to get us controlling interest.'

Movita shook her head. ‘Those JRU men aren't just mean bastards,' she said. ‘They're rich mean bastards.'

‘Honey,' Jen told her. ‘Now you're startin' to understand Wall Street.' She answered Bryce's email, resisted flirting with him electronically, and sent another message to Lenny. By then it was almost midnight and Officer Mowbry was going off shift. Jennifer slipped off to her own cell.

It was the next morning that Jennifer came up with the plan. She was so excited that she had to tell Maggie. That wasn't enough, though. She took the chance and punched
in Warden Harding's phone number into the cell phone. She was lucky that Movita and not Miss Ringling answered the phone. ‘I got it, girl,' Jen told Movita.

‘I knew ya' would,' Mo said calmly, but Jen knew her well enough now to read the pleasure in her voice. ‘The Warden is in a meeting right now. Can I take a message?'

‘We're going to take them public.'

‘And that would mean …' Movita said.

‘We offer Tarrington and the rest of his crew a minority position in a company that gets publicly traded.'

‘And that would mean?' Movita said again.

‘We tempt them with the idea of getting paid out when we raise a lot of money for them to take them public. They'll have a smaller percentage of the total stock but the stock will be traded on Wall Street and because their holdings are publicly traded they can cash out whenever they want to,' Jennifer explained.

‘And that would benefit the situation because …' Movita inquired.

‘Because then we'd control them!' Jen said, and she actually giggled.

‘You white girls got a strange sense of humor,' Movita said, her voice lowered, and then she chuckled. ‘I'll tell the Warden, as soon as she's out of her meetin'.'

Jen hung up and went over the whole plan again with Maggie, then phoned Lenny and presented it to him. ‘Do you think you can you put together halfway decent financials for an IPO?' she asked him.

‘Sure,' he told her. ‘As long as you save a bunk for me in your cell.'

Jen smiled. ‘I think for that you go to Allenwood,' she told him.

‘Yeah, I hear it's a real country club,' he cracked. That made her laugh out loud and Maggie raised her eyebrows and looked over at her. They had to be as circumspect as possible because the door to the library had to be kept open and an officer was always merely steps away.

Jen had to make all of her calls from the corner of the library by the window to keep the static down. The cell phone got the best signal there but it meant that she could be seen from the doorway and Maggie had to spend her time watching out for the authorities. Worse yet, now Jen was working on the laptop – running spreadsheets and projections based on a set of givens that were so far from given that they were more like fairy tales. But she had to start somewhere. Working on the laptop was even more dangerous than using the cell phone and when she used it Maggie actually had to stand in the doorway, her arms crossed, pretending to be doing something while she kept an eye out for an officer. ‘It's my punishment,' she had said. ‘For being the authority in so many classrooms for so many years. Now I'm chickie. Do they still call the lookout that?'

‘I don't think so,' Jen admitted.

Maggie sighed. ‘I think it would have been more fun to spend my life misbehaving.'

Keeping her back to the door and being far enough back from the library window so she couldn't be seen from the yard, Jen worked on convincing Lenny. ‘Look,' she said, ‘we don't have to promise them anything financially in the IPO. We break it out, separate from the other JRU holdings. Prisons right now are a glamor stock. It's a growth industry in an uncertain economy.'

‘Well,
there's
a stunning indictment of the American Way if I ever heard one,' Lenny told her.

She looked down at the spreadsheet she was running. ‘The point is, we'll get buyers. Then Tarrington and his boys will get some money to further dilute their holdings, and for our services we retain the lion's share.'

‘The lion's share, Jennifer, means everything,' Lenny told her. ‘Most people get that wrong and they think it means the majority. But the lion takes all.'

‘Well, there wouldn't be anything wrong with that, either,' Jen said. She paused. ‘Please, Lenny. Do you think that you can do it?'

‘Maybe,' he admitted.

‘Can you get an accounting firm to rubber-stamp it?'

‘You know the answer to that.'

Simultaneously they said, ‘For the right price.'

‘Do you want me to try to get HVS to underwrite it?' Lenny asked.

Jennifer thought about how poorly he was regarded at HVS as a rainmaker. She doubted they'd pick up any deal Lenny Benson brought in. Plus, she didn't want any of those sons-of-bitches to have any idea what she was doing. ‘Nah,' she told him. ‘I think we can do better. You think the Rafferty boys would place it?'

‘Those pirates? They'd mutiny if you brought in anyone else. Anyway, if we actually do take JRU public we'll want to use every greedy bastard there when the IPO's floated to buy the thing and hype it.'

‘The point is, Lenny, could you use Hudson, Van Schaank cards, stationery, and letterhead now to make them think that HVS is interested? Then we can switch later once they've taken the bait.'

‘Ah, the old bait and switch,' Lenny said.

You have lovely eyes.
The phrase from Bryce's email – for
no reason she could think of – came into her head again. She put it out. ‘Well, we've got the HVS bait,' she said.

‘It won't just be bait, Jennifer, it'll be money.'

‘Yeah, but it won't have to be so much. Not if they think there's a shot of a public offering. They'll dilute themselves. Then, once we are in an ownership position …'

‘Look, I don't want to rain on your parade but I'm just pointing out they may not want to dilute their stock if they think there's going to be a public offering. It depends on how greedy they are.'

She paused. He was smart and he was right. ‘Okay,' she said. ‘Then we make it a two-step waltz. First we give them some money infusion for some stock. Not just the loans. Then we tempt them with a possible offering or an acquisition and dilute them further.'

Before she could hear his response, Maggie hissed at her. ‘Byrd,' she said, and Jennifer hung up, just like that, stashed the phone behind the books on the self-help shelf (after all, they were helping themselves), closed the iBook and crossed the room to the pile of books waiting to be put back alphabetically. It was a good thing, Jennifer thought, that in all her years in prison Maggie had never been caught with contraband.

Movita handed the kite to Jen at dinner. She opened it and read it. ‘Could you join me this evening in my cell. Maggie.' Jen looked over at Movita, who nodded and Jen nodded back.

It was an odd thing, but everybody knew not to visit Maggie, at least not in her house. Unlike everyone else in Jennings she neither ate in the cafeteria nor with a group. She could always be approached in the library on any prison
business, somehow the unwritten rule ‘not in my cell' totally applied.

Jennifer and Movita were walking down the hallway with an escort to get from one unit to another, but with Movita's connections, the officer only went as far as the metal door that closed her wing off from Maggie's. Once the door closed behind her, Jennifer proceeded down the corridor. She felt as if she were on her way to see the headmistress of her school. Then she chuckled. Actually, she was going to see the headmistress. When she approached Maggie's house door, she knocked softly on the metal door frame.

‘Hello,' Maggie said, and Jennifer followed Movita in.

As far as Jennifer knew, Maggie was the only inmate at Jennings who had a private cell. Sometimes others, for a time, didn't have to share when inmates were released or reassigned, but nobody ever seemed to be assigned to Maggie's cell. Looking around, Jennifer was amazed. She had never seen such order or cleanliness. The woman must scrub the place with a toothbrush, she thought. She noticed that the blanket on her bunk was pulled very tight – military style. Her magazines were stacked neatly by date on the floor near the head of her bed. All of her hygiene products were lined up along the ledge of her high windowsill. But the one thing that wasn't visible for inspection was the fact that Margaret Rafferty had privacy, and that was what Jennifer craved most of the time.

Maggie sat down on the chair and gestured toward the bunk. ‘Have a seat,' she said. And then took out a plate – a real plate with a line of gold around the edge and twining leaves and flowers on it. Jennifer realized she hadn't seen china or a real cup or bowl in months.

She took the plate from Maggie's hand. On it were small
wedges of cheese, each one centered on a Ritz cracker and topped with a pimento-stuffed olive. There were also a few thin stalks of celery, with a white strip of what looked like cream cheese on it. Was it possible? It made Jennifer think of Sunday afternoons at her grandmother's.

Movita took an hors d'oeuvre, as if having canapés at six o'clock was the norm at Jennings. Following her lead, Jennifer picked up a celery stalk. Meanwhile Maggie took out three perfect martini glasses. Just the sight of them gave Jennifer a stab. Of course, they were totally contraband, but they made Jennifer long for the days that she hung out in bars and drank Cosmopolitans until she was pie-eyed. She knew better than to ask how Maggie managed to keep them hidden from random cell searches.

Maggie cleared her throat. ‘Movita,' she said, and inclined her head toward Mo. ‘Jennifer.' Jen felt the woman's eyes on her. ‘I know that you are both very bright and very motivated. I certainly don't think I underestimated you, yet working together I feel as if in the past I didn't know the full breadth of your abilities.' She paused for a moment and, to Jen's astonishment, she took out a martini shaker. ‘Blocking the dreadful JRU takeover is going to take a lot of work, could fail, and may very well cause us enormous problems.' She looked from Jen to Movita. ‘This afternoon I realized just how much was involved and how much is at stake. The question I want to put to you is whether or not you want to pursue this, balls to the wall, no matter what?'