Chasing the Wind (30 page)

They'd been arguing for hours.

"Negotiating," Raymond had muttered when Amalise made the comment.

Across the table Tom sprawled in his chair, facing Doug, his face red, arms folded over his chest, and head tilted to one side, listening. Doug leaned forward on his arms, making his case. Tempers were rising fast.

Today was the day to act, she'd decided. The room would soon erupt once more over this issue. And when that happened she'd make her move, escaping for a few hours while the principals pulled themselves together. No one would even notice her absence.

So far as she could see, the problem arose from the timing of the closing. The federal wire system was usually jammed the day before a national holiday. So if anything went wrong during the closing and a lender or investor had already wired funds, that money was stuck in a non-interest-bearing account for thirty-six hours in a dead deal while the nation sat down for Thanksgiving dinner.

And no one wanted to take that chance. The banks insisted that the twenty million be sent to First Merchant Bank first. The investors refused. They had the same concern—and more to lose.

Robert leaned over and whispered in Tom's ear. From the corner of her eye, Amalise glanced at Bingham, sitting on the other side of Tom. She'd caught him watching her several times this morning, just like Robert, as though she were a specimen he didn't quite recognize.

Tom nodded, then looked at Doug, tapping his chest. "Our position isn't negotiable, Bastion. We're putting in twenty million to the banks' seven. They'll fund first."

Doug shrugged and slowly pushed up from his chair. He turned to Preston. "I'll be in my office. Let me know if things change."

Robert snorted.

Tom slapped the table with the flat of his hand. "Take it or leave it."

"Go make your phone call. Talk to your boss. I'll be in my office."

Tom blanched.

Robert's face turned purple. Amalise watched the mottled flush spread over his cheeks as Doug walked out of the room.

For an instant everyone was still. Then Robert shot from his chair, his fist slamming down on the table in the same instant.

"Hold it." Tom stretched his arm across Robert and said, "Let's go down to the small conference room."

As Amalise left the room, Rebecca picked up a pencil and began writing on a legal pad. She was so engrossed that when Bingham walked over and sat down beside her, she was startled.

"Hello, beauty."

Rebecca gave him a half smile.

He looked down at her notepad and then up at her. "Complicated issue."

She nodded.

Arms on the table, he turned toward the door, looking for Robert and Tom, she supposed. "But it shouldn't be."

"Shouldn't be what?"

He turned back to her again and lifted his shoulder. "The chicken-and-egg problem, funding, all of it." He smiled. "It shouldn't be complicated. There's a fairly simple solution."

Robert stuck his head in the door. Bingham looked up and said he'd be there in a minute. Then he leaned toward Rebecca and spoke low, explaining what he'd meant. When he finished, he sat back, hands flat before him on the table. "Of course, I have no idea how you'd say all that in legalese. But I think it would work."

Rebecca's brows arched. "What about overnight interest on the funds?"

"I'll agree to that. The investors shouldn't lose by waiting."

He looked at her notepad and then waved the back of his hand in her general direction. "It's all yours. Consider it a gift." With a grin, he planted his hands on each arm of the chair and rose, buttoning his jacket. "Once more into the fray." With a nod, he walked off.

She sat there doodling on the notepad, thinking. What Bingham had suggested made sense. It was simple and fair. She began to sketch out the plan. It took over an hour. When she'd finished, she read over what she'd written and then rewrote the entire thing, making revisions and corrections. At last, when she was pleased with what she'd done, she picked up the legal pad and walked to the door. Preston would be in Doug's office, she knew. That would give her an excuse to present the solution to both of them at once. That way there'd be no question in Doug's mind who'd come up with the proposal. She would tell them that Bingham had sketched it out. But he'd given it to her, and she'd turned it into a real solution.

Pushing through the door, she felt a twinge of guilt at not including Amalise in this. But waiting at the elevator, she told herself that they were each on their own now and liked it that way. Still, she'd already bypassed Amalise once by getting herself assigned to this transaction. The elevator arrived and she stepped in, wondering what Jude would think of her actions.

Then she tossed her head and stabbed the elevator button with the pad of her thumb. Doug's office was on eighteen.

Tom, Richard, Robert, and Murdoch were holed up in the small conference room, talking on the speakerphone to their fellow investors in New York. Steve and Lars would be joining them shortly. Preston and Doug had retired to Doug's office. Raymond had disappeared, saying he had work to do. Rebecca had said she'd stay in the conference room to catch up on some of the documents.

Amalise walked into her office and strolled past the row of deal books on the bookshelf, running her fingers across the sequence of letters embossed on the spines. At the window she stopped and watched the swarm of people below. It was the right thing to do, she was certain.

Still. She turned around and gazed at the diploma hanging on the wall near the door. Tulane Law School, 1976. She thought of all the years that piece of parchment represented, all the work and dreams. All the hours she'd shuttled food at Café Pontalba to pay for that diploma. Working until midnight, scurrying home to study afterward, then rumbling up
St. Charles Avenue on the streetcar to school every morning and back to the café at night. Had she really come so far to take a chance on losing it all for the family on Kerlerec?

Yes. Especially because of Luke.

She was excited with anticipation, but also frightened. She remembered feeling that way once when she was small. Jude was teaching her how to ride her new bike without training wheels. She must have been eight or nine years old. He'd held onto the bike at first, running alongside as she rode up and down in front of her house, weaving and wobbling. But just when she'd gotten the hang of it and was feeling steady, he said it was time to try it on her own.

So she'd sat there, perched on the bicycle seat, feet on the pedals, waiting, anticipating. Jude said he'd warn her first. He would say, "Ready, set, go," then give her a little push and she would take off on her own.

As she'd waited for that moment, sucking in her breath, she had looked down the sidewalk ahead, and she gripped those handlebars like she'd never let go. Because she knew that she might fall, might scrape a knee, and it would hurt. But she also knew that if things went right, she would experience a new kind of freedom. She would be able to fly from now on instead of walking everywhere she went. She'd feel the wind in her hair, and something would change forever. If only she took the chance.

She looked again at the books and the Lucite trophies on the shelves beside them, mementoes of everything she had to lose. And then she thought of those childhood days when happiness turned on decisions as simple as learning to ride a bike. Of course, that bicycle was long gone, replaced in her life by other vehicles. And it occurred to her then that those books, as well as the agreements and transactions they represented, were, in the grand scheme of things, ephemeral vessels. One day other lawyers would sit in this office, at this desk, instead of her. Like the bicycle, the agreements bound in these volumes would come to an end in a couple of years and be replaced.

But there was only one Luke.

Ready. Set. She retrieved her purse from the desk drawer and slung it onto her shoulder.
Go!
She headed for the door.

Caroline and Ellis might make out somehow if she did nothing. Charlie and Nick and Daisy might, too, eventually. But Luke would not. Luke would disappear forever behind that wall he'd built around himself. His cry in the park would be his last if he were yanked from the safety of Caroline and Ellis's care and returned to the orphanage. He would give up on the world once and for all.

Amalise drove uptown to Whitney Bank on Carrollton Avenue, where she kept her accounts, and parked on the street. She stepped out into the dappled shade as sunshine filtered through branches overhead. Birds sang, and a squirrel inspected her from a nook in the tree.

The bank was on the corner. As she entered the lobby, she could see Edward Stephenson sitting in his glassed-in office across the way. He looked up, waved, and walked to the door, holding it open for her.

They shook hands and she took a seat, holding her purse in her lap. "I have an unusual transaction to work through, Edward, and I'll need your help."

He sat behind his desk and picked up a pen. "Just tell me what you need."

It took two hours to explain and a half hour more to sign the documents. But when she left, Edward had already dispatched someone to the offices of C. T. Realty and was picking up the phone. She had no doubt he'd get it done, and in time.

Later that afternoon in the conference room, Amalise's lips parted as she listened to the proposed solution for the funding problem. It was Rebecca's idea, Doug said, looking down the table past Amalise. Beside her, Rebecca shifted and looked down.

"Rebecca?" He motioned in her direction. "Why don't you explain."

Rebecca nodded, squaring the papers on the table before her as she looked up. "My idea's simple, really. Investors fund into the company's Cayman account at Banc Franck on the day before the closing, on Tuesday. Interest on the notes will begin to accrue during this period."

Tom turned. "Bingham, the company agrees?"

"Yes. We've already discussed it."

Rebecca glanced down at her notes and back up. "On Wednesday morning, the closing documents are executed, and when that's complete, Mr. Murdoch initiates a conference call with Banc Franck." She glanced at Murdoch, and he nodded. "All banks participate in the call, and Cayman will confirm the twenty million is on deposit as required."

She then fixed her eyes on Tom. "Upon that confirmation, the banks begin funding, and when the last bank funds are in, Cayman is notified. Banc Franck then promptly wires the investor funds to First Merchant Bank."

Doug interjected with a look at Frank Earl, who nodded. "That solves the problem from our point of view. For the banks. We'll take Cayman's confirmation that the money's there to start our funding and go first." He looked at Bingham, and Murdoch nodded. "And it should satisfy the investors, since they'll be earning interest even if by chance their money is stuck in the Caymans over the holiday. And funds in the Cayman account will be under Bingham's control, not First Merchant Bank's."

Amalise picked up a pencil and drew circles on the notepad, a spiral of smaller and smaller circles. The idea was simple and smart. Beside her, Rebecca was silent.

Tom said, "I think that might work. I'll have to run it by the rest of the group, but it sounds good." He turned to Bingham. "What do you think?"